


Pull Me Apart

by tiigi



Series: Pull Me Apart [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Bullying, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Explicit Sexual Content, Homophobic Language, M/M, Minor Violence, Possessive Behaviour, Secret Relationship, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:35:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21546937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiigi/pseuds/tiigi
Summary: “There are better ways to cause trouble, Tozier.” Patrick tells him, condescending. There’s something in his eyes then that Richie sees, something dangerous and daring, like he wants Richie to ask more. It’s both terrifying and morbidly intriguing. Richie thinks wildly that if Patrick wasn’t such an asshole bully, they’d probably be friends.***In the heat of the moment, Richie does something stupid. Then he does it again, and again, and again.
Relationships: Patrick Hockstetter/Richie Tozier
Series: Pull Me Apart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1736953
Comments: 264
Kudos: 466
Collections: It Faves





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been obsessed with Patrick Hockstetter recently and now here we are!
> 
> Also for the sake of this story, let’s say Patrick is still creepy and violent but not a literal psychopath :)(:

Richie can admit that getting after school detention in the first week back is not his best work. He had wanted this year to be a fresh start, one in which he actually applied himself in class and got good grades, but after being set five different pieces of homework on the first day back Richie had decided that those hopes and dreams were amature.

He should be working on upping his prank game. The teachers at the Derry public high school have been allowed to live without fear for too long, and it’s Richie’s responsibility to make sure they’re always on their toes.

Well, that had been the plan. It didn’t go as well as he’d expected, given that he’s been caught emptying soil into the gym coach’s desk draw, but Richie definitely doesn’t regret it, even if it means he has to spend the next few hours in a boring classroom with a bunch of other teenage delinquents.

He’s been here before plenty of times so he knows the drill. Go in, sit down, pretend you’re doing work until the teacher gets so bored that they either fall asleep or leave, and then doodle cartoon dicks onto the desk until it’s time to go home. Richie doesn’t need to be told twice.

It takes him a little off guard, then, when he walks into the room to see an empty desk where the supervisor should be and Patrick Hockstetter reclining on a chair near the back of the room. His legs are crossed and his feet are resting on his table; when he sees Richie a slow, scary smile spreads across his face. Richie tries not to gag.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he walks in warily, trying not to show his discomfort. The Bowers’ gang have been after Richie ever since he can remember, but allowing Patrick to intimidate him the first time they see each other won’t bode well for the rest of the year.

“Have a nice summer?” Hockstetter asks innocently, fingers drumming a rhythm against the tabletop. Richie takes a seat in front of the teachers’ desk on the opposite end of the classroom, as far away from Hockstetter as he can get, but turns around in his chair so he doesn’t have his back to him.

“Peachy, thanks.” His rucksack falls to the floor with a heavy thunk. The school is silent, all the students gone home, all the teachers either hiding in their offices or trying to sneak out early. “And yourself?”

It makes Richie want to laugh, this line of conversation, but he knows it’s just how Patrick plays. Richie can play like this as well if it’ll buy him time: he’s not opposed to making smalltalk with the resident bully. It beats getting his teeth kicked in by the guy.

Patrick doesn’t reply, but then Richie wasn’t too bothered about getting an answer in the first place. Instead, the tip of his tongue darts out and traces his bottom lip, fingers stilling against the desk suddenly. The only sound in the room is the tick, tick of the clock on the wall and Richie’s uneven heartbeat until Patrick talks again.

“She’s not coming, you know.” Richie grits his teeth and doesn’t reply. He’s uncomfortable with his body twisted round like a contortionist but having Hockstetter behind him, not being able to see what he’s doing… that doesn’t sit well with Richie.

“What?” He asks, rolling his eyes for show. Patrick just smiles, creepy and intense.

“It’s the bitch chemistry teacher.” Patrick tells him and Richie winces. He already knows which one Patrick is talking about, because there’s only one chemistry teacher vengeful enough to actually warrant Patrick’s vehement dislike. “She left for coffee twenty minutes ago and hasn’t come back. You’re late.”

“If you wanted to get me alone, Patrick, you should have just said.” Richie says smarmily, although dread is beginning to claw its way up his throat. Would it be better for him to make a run for it now? Fuck detention, there’s no way Patrick Hockstetter is going to sit in silence with him for two hours without trying to pull anything shady.

Richie chances a quick look out the window, taking his eyes off Patrick, who clearly doesn’t feel any need to do the same. He’s been watching Richie since he first stepped into the room and his gaze on Richie’s skin feels like crawling ants.

It’s raining outside, heavily. The scorching summer that had seemed to stretch on endlessly during their vacation has well and truly come to an end, and with it has brought a looming thunderstorm. Richie doesn’t feel like walking home in that. If he waits until five then he can probably catch a lift home with Bill’s dad: he always drives past the school on his way home from work.

If he runs, Patrick will probably chase him.

“So what did you do?” Patrick asks, surprising Richie by changing the subject to something innocent. Richie watches as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes, lighting up right there in the classroom even though smoking anywhere on school grounds is strictly forbidden. He’s glad Eddie isn’t there, because this would invoke an asthma attack for sure.

“Tried to turn Coach’s desk into a flower bed.” Richie says proudly, because whilst Richie’s pranks are probably a little - a lot - tame for Patrick’s taste, he’ll surely still appreciate the sentiment. Sure enough, Patrick snorts and shakes his head.

“Pussy move,” he says, but he’s still grinning maniacally so Richie doesn’t let the criticism destroy him.

“What would you have done then, asshole.” For a second Richie thinks Patrick is going to get angry, going to object to Richie’s tone of voice or choice of words, but instead he tilts his head and starts to scratch the wooden desk, an action that is both intimidating and crazy annoying.

“There are better ways to cause trouble, Tozier.” Patrick tells him, condescending. There’s something in his eyes then that Richie sees, something dangerous and daring, like he wants Richie to ask more. It’s both terrifying and morbidly intriguing. Richie thinks wildly that if Patrick wasn’t such an asshole bully, they’d probably be friends.

“Whatever,” Richie hunches his shoulders almost automatically, as though to protect himself from a blow he doesn’t know to expect.

“What, you don’t like that?” Patrick grins. He’s really enjoying himself now, Richie can tell. “You can’t handle that, Tozier?”

“Funny,” Richie says, always needing the last word. He’s going to get the shit beaten out of him and it’ll be entirely his own fault. “That’s what your mom said last night.”

Patrick’s smirk changes into something sharper, something more unpleasant. When he speaks, he does so in a slow drawl that brings goosebumps to Richie’s skin.

“You’re cute.” He sneers. Then, startling Richie so badly that he almost falls out of his chair, Patrick kicks his chair back and stands up. He clears six feet easily and when Richie is sitting down like this Patrick looms over him, menacing and ominous as he slinks around the edge of the room like a cat. Richie’s heart thumps against his ribcage, adrenaline readying him for a fight or flight reaction.

It’s not necessary, however, because Hockstetter passes Richie completely and instead heads for the door. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, levelling Richie with a stare so intense it leaves his mouth dry.

“Are you gonna sit in here all damn day? ‘Cause I sure as hell am not.”

“Hmm, sit in this warm, dry classroom or take my chances with Patrick Hockstetter.” Richie pretends to think, even though there’s no way he’s hanging about in school for no reason. “That’s a tough call.”

“Whatever, fag.” Hockstetter rolls his eyes, lips twitching upwards at the corners. Richie ignores the jab, because he has the strange feeling that Patrick didn’t mean it as anything other than an empty insult. “If you wanna waste your time here be my guest, but I have better things to do.”

With that, he turns the handle and brushes out of the door, leaving Richie alone in a boring classroom with no one around to annoy. Cursing, Richie gathers his bag and speedwalks to the door, the sound of his feet slapping against the ground echoing through the empty hallway. Because he has no survival instinct and probably a death wish as well, he catches up to Patrick just as he’s about to leave.

“Yeah,” he pants, carrying on their conversation as though it had never finished. “I’m sure your evening of torturing the neighbourhood cats is going to be riveting.”

Patrick turns to him with raised eyebrows but he looks amused more than anything. Richie feels himself flush in embarrassment at having been caught running to keep up with him.

“Don’t knock it till you try it, flamer.” Richie ignores the insult, more than happy with the fact that Patrick isn’t actively trying to kill him. It’s strange and very off putting– Richie is too afraid to let down his guard for a second unless Patrick is just biding his time, but even as they walk down the school steps together Patrick makes no moves to attack him.

Richie kind of wants to ask what the hell is going on, but that would be pushing his luck.

They’re both drenched almost instantly. The weather is foul and Richie doesn’t have a coat, so he bears the full brunt of the cold wind against his bare skin. His teeth are chattering and he’s got another half hour of walking ahead of him before he’ll be able to have a shower and warm up.

Patrick, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all. He’s wearing a short sleeved t-shirt so it isn’t like he’s any warmer than Richie. He’s a psychopath, Richie decides, it’s the only explanation. Richie glances out of the corner of his eye at Patrick’s arms, skinny but with hidden strength. He could probably choke Richie with one hand if he wanted to. He probably wants to.

Ironically, he’s also heading towards a car parked on the opposite side of the road.

Richie is surprised and more than a little relieved to see that it isn’t the car the Bowers gang usually drives, and that Patrick is still in fact on his own. One is manageable, four isn’t. This car is smaller, older looking, definitely more beaten up. It’s probably a family car, Richie thinks, and bites back a snort at the thought of Patrick having a happy family. It’s too weird to contemplate.

Patrick walks off alone without saying a word - not that Richie expected a fond farewell, but it does leave him feeling perturbed, like he needs closure or something.

Whatever. He tries to shake it off. He’s had more than enough conversation with Patrick Hockstetter for one day, he should be glad that he doesn’t have to spend anymore time with him. Patrick is a ticking time bomb, and Richie doesn’t want to be around when he blows up.

He doesn’t want to have to walk home in the middle of a storm either, but he doesn’t have much choice. He makes it about halfway down the road before he becomes conscious of the car behind him. The sound of the engine had been almost completely drowned out by the rain and Patrick doesn’t have his fucking headlights on. Figures.

It’s light outside but the streets are deserted, no one wanting to be out in the horrible weather. Shit, Richie thinks, this is it. He’s going to kill me and no one will even notice. They’d hear his screams and they wouldn’t even peek past their curtains.

But Patrick doesn’t make any attempt to get out of the car. He drives slowly, matching Richie’s walking pace and dawdling against the curb. Eventually, when Richie can’t take it anymore and has to turn around and flip Patrick his middle finger, Patrick laughs and winds down the window.

“Jeez, kid, lighten up.” He smirks. “Just wanted to know if you want a lift, is all.”

“With you?” Richie scoffs, all false bravado and attitude. “I’d rather have sex with Greta Bowie. She’d probably give me less diseases.”

Richie isn’t exactly expecting Patrick to take no for an answer and just drive away, but it still worries him when all Patrick does is trace the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip again and shake his head.

“I’m trying to do something nice here, Tozier. You aren’t being very grateful. Do you  _ want _ to become pedo food?” 

“Nope.” Richie gives him the shit eating grin he’s so infamous for. “That’s exactly why I’m not getting in your car, idiot.”

Patrick sighs and Richie is naïve enough to think that maybe he will get the message and just drive away, maybe Richie will be lucky enough to escape unscathed tonight. Of course, nothing with Patrick Hockstetter could ever go that smoothly.

Richie only becomes aware that Hockstetter has mounted the sidewalk when he’s barely a yard away from hitting him with the bumper of the car. Richie yelps in a very unmanly fashion and jumps out of the way before the car can make contact, even though Patrick isn’t driving very fast at all and it probably wouldn’t have done much damage. It’s the thought that counts, and Hockstetter was probably thinking about Richie’s body squashed under his tires.

“What the  _ fuck,  _ Hockstetter?” Richie demands, arms flailing. Patrick has more thankfully swerved back into the road so Richie isn’t in any immediate danger. Probably.

“Are you actually trying to kill me?” Richie continues, living up to his reputation of not knowing when to shut his mouth. “What the hell happened to doing something nice?”

“It wasn’t getting me anywhere interesting.” Patrick replies lazily. Richie huffs and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans just so they don’t hang limply at his sides. He feels nervous somehow, but dismisses the feeling straight away. Who wouldn’t feel nervous with Patrick Hockstetter so close by? 

“I’m sorry me being alive is so boring for you.” He says sarcastically, watching his shoes move forward on the tarmac sidewalk. Nothing about Hockstetter is trustworthy, Richie has learned after so long of being his target.

But when Richie next looks at Patrick he meets Richie’s stare with an expression so intense that it captivates him. Richie is so mesmerised by whatever insane emotion is spilling from Patrick’s mind into his own that he stumbles and almost eats dirt.

“Don’t worry, Tozier.” Patrick tells him, voice perfectly audible even over the faint sound of thunder in the distance. “Nothing about you is boring.”

With that, he drives away, leaving Richie shivering and soaked to the bone to walk home by himself. The silence seems so loud that he almost wishes he had gotten in Patrick’s car. At least it would have landed him somewhere more interesting than on his back, staring up at his bedroom ceiling, spending another night in his house all alone.

***

Richie sees Patrick the next day in school as he’s doing his best to sneak away from his gym lesson. Sophomore gym is as fun for Richie as yanking teeth and he’s already decided before Coach yells out their schedule for the next year that he won’t be attending many of these classes.

He’s just made it over to the geography huts - he can hide behind these once everyone has been registered and no one will even notice he’s slipped away - when he becomes aware of someone’s eyes on him. The back of his neck prickles and he spins around to come face to crotch with Patrick Hockstetter, who is balanced on the edge of the wall. His legs dangle down and Richie narrowly avoids getting kicked.

“You lived, then?” Patrick smirks around the cigarette in his mouth. He blows the smoke out through his nose, which Richie actually thinks is very cool but would never say so.

“No thanks to you, psycho.” Richie has to cover his eyes with his hand to shield them from the sun. He only narrowly manages to avoid Patrick jumping on top of him as he hops down from the wall and peers around the building.

“Skipping class?” Richie notices how close they are when he inhales and gets a mouthful of second hand smoke.

“I’m sorry, I know how important education is to you.” Richie’s usual sarcastic attitude is lacking it’s bite. After last night he should be more terrified than ever of Patrick, but for some reason he can’t convince his body that it should be readying itself for an attack. 

“I don’t blame you,” Patrick ignores what Richie says, taking another drag of the cigarette before putting it out against the wall and flicking it to the ground. “When I was a sophomore he used to make us run laps before any game we played. It didn’t matter what sport it was.”

“You sound nostalgic, Hockstetter.” Richie can’t resist another jibe, even though Patrick is being civil to him. “What year are you retaking this time?”

“Jeez, Tozier.” Patrick turns to him and rolls his eyes. When he leans back against the wall and folds his arms over his chest, Richie’s eyes are again drawn to the definition in his biceps and the visible stretch of bare skin above the waistline of his jeans.

“Give it a rest, kid.” He continues, looking Richie up and down. “There’s no one around to impress. You’re wasting your time.”

Richie bristles. Patrick has somehow managed to make him feel like a little kid getting a scolding from an adult. Fuck him.

“Time spent annoying you is not time wasted, Hockstetter.” Richie tells him, dead serious.

“Do you actually want me to beat you up? Is that what you want? ‘Cause I’ll do it, Tozier, you just have to ask real nice.” Patrick speaks slowly. Richie has never really paid any attention to it before but now he can’t help but notice the relaxed way Patrick rolls his words around with his tongue before he spits them out, like he’s in no hurry, like he’s certain that the world will wait for him to have his say.

“You wouldn’t know nice if it sucked your dick, Hockstetter.” It’s not one of Richie’s finest, but Patrick’s successful attempts to humiliate Richie don’t give him a lot to work with.

“Christ,” Patrick raises his eyebrows, more amused than surprised. “Do you come with an off switch?” His arm darts out and his fingers brush over Richie’s shoulder. Richie tries to knock his hand away but Patrick grabs his fingers and twists them so suddenly that Richie can’t help but gasp.

“Fuck, ow.” Richie scowls at Patrick. “Never mess with a man’s right hand.” He says, as sincere as he can be with his own breath fogging up his glasses.

Patrick’s hand returns, only this time it’s reaching for Richie’s hair. He darts back, thinking that Patrick is about to yank his hair from his head, but forces himself to calm down when nothing like that happens.

“Spider,” is all the explanation Patrick gives as he runs his fingers through Richie’s hair, pulling back after a few seconds and revealing the small spider that’s crawling between his fingers. 

Richie is still recovering from having Patrick so close to him. Richie’s face had practically been pressed into his chest and he’d smelt so strongly of cigarette smoke that it had felt like he was surrounding Richie completely, taking over all his senses. His parents are hardly ever around anymore and because he’s the most physically affectionate of all the Losers, his friends are usually trying to get away from his touch. He can’t remember the last time anyone ran their fingers through his hair like that, even as briefly as Patrick just did. It’s such a soft, comforting sensation that Richie wishes Patrick hadn’t stopped.

Patrick is at least a head and a half taller than Richie so Richie has to look up to make eye contact. Only when he does that does Patrick do anything, as though he was waiting for an audience. He raises his hand in front of Richie’s face and crushes the spider, flicking its flattened body onto the floor.

“Fucking creep,” Richie mutters for lack of a better insult. He’s feeling a little claustrophobic with Patrick so close to him; he feels hot and flushed all over, like if he were to look in a mirror his face would be red and blotchy. How the hell is Patrick Hockstetter of all people having this reaction on him?

And worse– is it obvious? He has enough problems with his repressed sexuality on its own. He still has to tell his friends, has to accept it for himself… he doesn’t need Hockstetter giving him an accidental boner and telling the entire school.

Except that’s exactly what Patrick seems to be intent on doing. He nudges Richie’s chin up with his knuckles and, in a move that’s uncharacteristically gentle, runs his thumb over Richie’s bottom lip. Instinctively, Richie goes to lick his lips and only realises his mistake when he tastes Patrick’s skin. His cheeks grow warm and his breath comes out unsteady. He can’t pull away.

“You’ve got a dirty fucking mouth, Tozier.” Patrick murmurs, distracted.

“Sorry if it offends your delicate sensibilities.” Richie manages to say, but his voice breaks in the middle so he must sound pathetic. God, he hopes he doesn’t sound turned on, because he fucking  _ is. _ How messed up is that? If his friends could see him now, what would they say? Richie would be embarrassed if they laughed but that would be the best case scenario. They’d probably think he was a freak, getting hard over his bully touching him up.

“Nah,” Patrick takes his hand away from Richie’s mouth and, just as Richie let’s put a relieved sigh, slides it over his neck and down his arm to curl his hand around Richie’s waist. Richie flounders. Patrick tugging Richie’s hair or touching his face– those he can wave away as Hockstetter just trying to mess with him.

This… this feels different. This feels intimate, uncomfortable in how much Richie likes the touch.

“Just makes me want to shut you up.” He steps away so quickly that Richie is left reeling, breath coming fast and uneven, erection pressing uncomfortably against his boxers. He watches Patrick amble across the field, shoulders hunched as he lights up another cigarette, completely unafraid of being caught skipping.

All Richie can think is,  _ ‘this isn’t going to end well.’ _

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2, aka ‘how many nicknames can I realistically use?’

Richie loves parties. Most of his friends hate them, either because they’re unhygienic or there are too many people or because drunk people are unpredictable. Richie fucking loves them: he loves that there are so many people. He loves that the beer is free and you can dance all you want without looking like an idiot because everyone is doing the same thing. It’s the one time Richie gets to be unapologetically himself.

He thinks he might hate this one, though. They’ve been there for a little over an hour and it’s yet to reach its peak. The other Losers love that it’s a mellow atmosphere and the music isn’t deafening, but the beer is so weak that Richie is on his fourth and he’s yet to feel tipsy. 

Not to mention, Patrick Hockstetter and his friends are at the other end of the room, and he hasn’t stopped staring at Richie for ten straight minutes. Richie is losing his mind. Usually he loves being the centre of attention but being stared at and having to pretend you haven’t noticed and that it doesn’t bother you is awkward as hell. Richie is in half a mind to march over there and demand that Patrick find something else to scrutinise, but Henry and the others would beat him to a pulp. Maybe he _is_ drunk, if he’s considering doing it anyway.

The Losers are in a circle, gathered round a card game that they’ve long since lost interest in. They’ve been nursing drinks for the past hour and, although even Eddie has relaxed a little, Richie is struggling to have a good time. There’s an itch burning under his skin and every time he looks at Patrick only to see him looking right back, it grows stronger.

“Fuck,” Richie mutters under his breath, finishing his drink and standing up. He staggers a little - because maybe he is a little tipsy - and his friends look up at him in confusion.

“Where are you going?” Eddie asks accusingly. “We’re not finished. You can’t leave just ‘cause you’re losing, dickwad.”

“I gotta go piss,” Richie grins lecherously, nudging Eddie’s knee with his toes. “You’re welcome to come with me, Eddie Spaghetti. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Eddie scrunches his nose up and flicks a card at Richie’s retreating back. He’s sure his laugh carries over the music, right over to the Bowers gang who watch him with matching murderous expressions as he passes. Hockstetter’s eyes burn holes through his clothing.

The bathroom on the ground floor is locked with a queue longer than Richie’s dick waiting outside, so he slips up the stairs. He’s not sure whose house this is but he figures whoever it is didn’t want anyone going upstairs because the second floor is deserted. Richie doesn’t bother locking the door behind him.

He doesn’t really need the bathroom– he just needed to get out of Patrick’s line of sight. He feels too warm, cheeks flushed and pupils dilated. He’s not drunk but he feels unsteady on his feet, like he could topple over any second and he wouldn’t be able to get back up. Maybe someone slipped something in his drink? He tries to think of when he left his beer alone but his mind is too clouded.

“Jeez, Tozier, you’re not looking too hot.” Patrick’s voice behind him has him whirling round, heart pounding unsteadily. He doesn’t relax any when he sees it’s Patrick because, even with the party downstairs, he’s probably distinctly unsafe now.

“Fuck you, Patrick.” Richie doesn’t have the energy for his usual taunts. “You follow me up here?”

“You looked like you needed a chaperone, titch.” Richie tries to scoff but he ends up just flailing and falling back against the counter, head knocking against the mirror behind him. Patrick sneers and takes a step forward, his long, lanky legs giving him an easy advantage. He crowds Richie against the wall. He smells like beer and cigarette smoke.

“Fuck you.” Richie says again, except this time it comes out a whisper. “You put something in my drink?” Patrick snorts.

“Nah,” He hisses, hand coming to tug at Richie’s hair. “You’re just easy for me.”

Then he kisses Richie. He kisses harshly, aggressively, just like Richie thought he would. Then Richie realises that that means he’s been thinking of kissing Patrick and that shuts him up pretty quickly.

Patrick fucks his tongue into Richie’s mouth, hands cradling Richie’s skull to keep him in place as he licks against Richie’s tongue, his lips, the roof of his mouth. Richie feels turned inside out as Patrick steals the breath from his lungs. The counter digs into Richie’s lower back and he knows he’ll have bruises there tomorrow but right now he can’t bring himself to care.

Patrick is an unstoppable force and Richie feels so dazed, shivery all over. When Patrick pulls away, a string of saliva connects their mouths and Richie watches the way Patrick licks Richie’s spit off his lips. 

“What the fuck?” Richie spits as soon as he can talk again. He makes a big show of wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, but his cheeks feel like they’re on fire so his blush probably ruins the angry look he’s going for. 

“What?” Patrick asks innocently. Richie has half a mind to kick him in the shin but he has a feeling that won’t end well for him.

“What are you _doing?_ I’m not– I’m not…” He’s not handing his most guarded secret to his worst enemy on a silver platter.

“Not what?” Patrick answers, words so sharp they cut like knives. Richie feels distinctly unsafe. “Gay? Are you sure, hot stuff?”

“Patrick…” Richie starts, uncertain. He doesn’t know what he wants to say but he knows he has to stop this before it gets any further. How could he look his friends in the eyes again after doing _this_ with their bully?

“C’mon, sweetheart,” Patrick croons, uncharacteristically gentle, all rounded edges and words dripping with honey. “It’s just a kiss. It doesn’t have to mean anything. You don’t have to be gay.”

Richie doesn’t want to give in. He doesn’t want to be doing this… but at the same time, he does. It feels good when Patrick’s mouth slides over his, when his hand tangles in Richie’s hair. It feels good when Patrick’s hand slides down Richie’s chest and settles over his cock through his jeans. Richie just wants to feel good.

“Yeah?” Hockstetter smirks when Richie bites his bottom lip, not-so-subtly pushing his hips out for easier access. His spidery fingers pop open the button on Richie’s jeans and his hand worms its way inside, fingers cool against Richie’s erection. 

“You gonna let me do this?” Patrick continues, sounding excited in a sick, twisted way. “You gonna let me touch you?”

Richie’s whole body shudders as he nods, eyes squeezed shut so he doesn’t have to see the way Patrick’s smirk turns into a nasty, predatory sneer. He knows Patrick isn’t asking him to get his explicit consent. He wants Richie humiliated, and he’s figured out that this is a way to guarantee it.

Patrick strokes Richie fast and dry. There’s nothing to slick it up and Richie finds himself curling over, the pleasure just on the wrong side of pain, but he doesn’t object.

He really shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t, but when Patrick drops to his knees in front of Richie, he can’t say no. It probably wouldn’t matter if he did anyway.

He’s never considered Patrick in a sexual way before, but he does it now. He’s kind of pretty, Richie thinks, in an unconventional way, a scary way. Patrick is all sharp angles, pale skin, dark bruises, soft hair that curls around the nape of his neck. His eyes are a startling, icy shade of blue that in any other context would make Richie uncomfortable, but now they just seem strikingly attractive.

Patrick’s lips, Richie notices as they wrap around his cock, are very red. He can’t hold in a whimper. His fingers scrabble at the counter behind him and his toes curl in his socks, digging into the carpet. Patrick’s mouth is so warm and wet and this is Richie’s first blowjob. He can already feel his orgasm creeping up on him.

 _“Fuck,_ oh my _god.”_ Richie whines, hand coming to rest atop Patrick’s head, unsure whether he’s allowed to pull his hair or not. With his dick in Patrick’s mouth, it seems like a better idea not to risk it, so Richie just strokes his hair as Patrick sucks him off sloppily.

“Hockstetter,” Richie pants, chest heaving. Patrick is a dangerous person in general– he’d beat Richie up at the drop of a hat and he’s as quick with his insults as he is with his fists, but this is the first time Richie has ever felt emotionally vulnerable in front of him.

It’s overwhelming, how Richie feels when he comes. He’s jerked off before, sure, and tentatively explored other aspects of his budding sexuality, but this is the first time he’s ever had another person’s hands - and mouth - on him, so his orgasm is intense. All he can hear is the deafening rush of blood in his own ears and he squeezes his eyes shut so hard that bright spots of colour flash behind his eyelids. His mouth hangs open and it’s only when he comes back to himself that he realises he’d been letting out a succession of high pitched, staccato moans.

Patrick must have unzipped his own jeans whilst Richie was trying to catch his breath, because the next thing Richie knows, Patrick is gripping his wrist and tugging Richie’s hand towards his cock. Richie is too dazed to fight it, too exhausted from the best orgasm of his life to complain. He feels like that would be ungrateful, and he really doesn’t want to owe Patrick Hockstetter anything.

Richie blinks back into awareness. “C’mon, Tozier.” Patrick is saying through clenched teeth, trying to jerk himself off with Richie’s limp hand. It isn’t going very well, but Patrick appears to be getting off well enough. It’s probably Richie’s unresponsiveness that’s turning him on so much.

On instinct, Richie curls his fingers around Patrick’s cock, cheeks flushing warm at the noise of approval that earns him. Patrick’s eyes are shut and his head is tipped back to the ceiling. If it weren’t for his chest rising and falling heavily or the twisted up look his face gets whenever Richie’s thumb brushes over the head of his cock, he’d look almost peaceful.

“Come on,” Patrick breathes, nails digging into Richie’s wrist. “Faster. Even you can do better than that, freak.”

Richie is divided: on the one hand he wants to let go of Patrick, shove him, get angry, demand that Patrick leave him and his friends the fuck alone. The other half of him, the half that wins in the end, wants to prove to Patrick what a good fucking job he can do. Patrick gave him a blowjob– even if he is a bully, for that he deserves better than a fist to fuck.

Richie pulls his hand away quickly and spits in his palm, using his other hand to tug at Patrick’s jeans and underwear where they’re bunched up at the top of his thighs. Patrick startles and watches Richie in confusion through slitted eyes, but when he’s happy that Richie isn’t planning anything awful he’s content to let him do his own thing.

“That’s good– _fuck._ Good effort.” Patrick mocks him as Richie starts stroking him, faster than before. It’s easier now that Patrick’s clothes are out of the way and, even though it’s his first time, Richie discovers that it’s just like jerking himself off. It’s a different angle, maybe, but the little pleased grunts Patrick makes and the way his cock throbs in Richie’s fist makes up for it.

“Good _effort?”_ Richie snipes, sarcastic attitude firmly stuck in place to make up for his earlier vulnerability. “You wanna give me a fucking grade and a gold star too?”

“B+,” Patrick hisses out a laugh at Richie’s twisted up facial expressing. “And I’m all out of gold stars.”

“Well, I’m all out of luck, aren’t I.” Richie understands what Patrick is doing. He thinks Patrick knows that he understands as well. It’s a clever form of manipulation, one that has Richie wanting more than ever to show Patrick how good he can make it, and not even understanding this can deter him.

Patrick is practically vibrating next to him; Richie feels enveloped, completely surrounded by all six feet of Patrick Hockstetter, and both his grabby hands. When Richie looks up his eyes snag on Patrick’s pale, exposed neck, and he gets the ridiculous desire to sink his teeth in. Patrick would probably get off on that, but he doesn’t want to do anything to risk angering him.

Richie settles for laying his free hand flat over Patrick’s chest and feeling his heartbeat, quick and fluttery and surreal, under his palm. It seems like minutes pass, the only sound the distant music from downstairs and the wet, sloppy noises of Richie’s hand moving over Patrick’s cock. There’s no prior warning when Patrick comes: he reaches out suddenly, so fast Richie flinches, thinking he’s about to get hit. He grips Richie’s face between his thumb and his forefinger, relishing in the scared look that gets him in return as he comes into Richie’s hand.

Afterwards, Richie washes his hands in a daze and straightened out his jeans, making sure he doesn’t look like he just got blown. Patrick watches him from behind in the mirror, grinning with all his teeth whenever they make eye contact.

Richie is maybe a little drunk, but he still has enough comprehension to understand what a colossal fucking mistake that was. There’s no way he can let anyone find out about this, but there’s also no way he can demand that Hockstetter stay quiet about it. He’s in a horrible situation.

But then Patrick approaches him from behind and rests his chin on Richie’s shoulder, watching their reflection. 

“Thanks, princess.” He goads, twirling a strand of Richie’s hair around his finger. “That was fun. Let’s do it again some time.”

Then he leaves, before Richie has even dried his hands.

***

Richie decides that ignoring Patrick is the way to go. Hockstetter will almost definitely beat him up if he mentions it or if he tries to insinuate that Patrick is gay, so it’s definitely a better idea that Richie pretends it simply never happened.

If only he could convince himself of that first. Memories flash behind his eyes whenever he tries to sleep. He finds himself sitting in class first period, his mind drifting towards his hands tangled in Patrick’s hair, Patrick’s tongue, how wet and warm his mouth had been…

Jesus, he needs to get a grip or his friends are going to figure out something is up. They’ve already noticed him acting weird and Beverly has made approximately seven jokes about him getting lost on his way to the toilet, so he knows he can’t get away with it forever. He’s not in any classes with Patrick, so as long as he avoids him in the hallways and doesn’t run into the gang after school, he can act like he absolutely did not get sucked off by Patrick Hockstetter in the bathroom at a party.

That lasts about three hours.

They hear Bowers’ gang before they even see them, walking four abreast across the hallway. Eddie, Mike and Ben drop behind the others instinctually, years of being the most targeted taking their toll. Bill, Bev and Stan stand firmly in front, refusing to be cowed. Usually Richie would be up front with them, being his usual assholey self in order to draw the attention away from the others, but today he can’t afford to be ballsy. He doesn’t want Patrick’s attention on him at all if he can help it. He hangs back next to Eddie, ignoring the strange look it gets him.

It doesn’t matter in the end. The gang has noticed them, and that means they’re in for trouble. Henry goes for Bill as usual - if it was any other day Richie would make an ill timed joke about Henry crushing on him - whilst Belch goes for Stan and Vic pushes through their ranks to get to Eddie. Patrick saunters past the chaos and, as Richie tries to get to Henry, by far the most violent of the other three, reaches out to grab Richie by the strap of his backpack. Patrick yanks Richie backwards and he stumbles, slamming into the lockers behind him and knocking his head so that his glasses almost fall off.

“What the _fuck–”_ The words get stuck in Richie’s throat when he sees the look on Patrick’s face. He doesn’t look angry, he looks entertained, like Richie’s struggling is amusing him. It’s the same look he gets on his face as he’s about to knock someone out, the same look he got just before he came. Richie shudders.

“Missed you,” Patrick hisses into his face, wrapping a hand around his neck. Richie wants to check on his other friends but he can’t - literally, because of Patrick choking him, but also because Patrick has captures his gaze so thoroughly that he can’t look away. 

“Did you miss me?” Patrick’s nails dig into the skin a little and he steps closer, pressing their bodies flush together. His thigh nudges against Richie’s crotch in a deliberate way that would look accidental to anyone looking on.

“Get off me,” Richie manages to choke out, fingers scrabbling at Patrick’s hand. It’s no use; he’s got more strength in one arm than Richie has in his whole body.

“Relax, fag.” Patrick’s hand loosens a little. It isn’t much, but Richie relaxes minutely. At least he knows Patrick means to humiliate him, not actually kill him. “I just wanted to ask you out.”

 _“What?”_ At Richie’s gobsmacked expression, Patrick snickers and pats his cheek - not so gently - with his other hand.

“Don’t look so surprised, flamer! I had fun last night, and I _know_ you did too.” His leg presses much more firmly against Richie’s dick through his trousers and Jesus, anyone looking would _definitely_ be able to tell now. Patrick isn’t talking that quietly. What the fuck kind of game is he playing?

“Are you _crazy?_ They’ll see us!” At this, they both glance in unison over to the others, where Henry is finishing up with Bill. Richie has never appreciated the school bell much but now it’s a literal godsend.

Richie really should have seen it coming when Patrick draws back his arm and punches him in the stomach with enough force behind it to knock the air out of him. Richie gasps, his desperate need to breathe overshadowing the pain.

“There,” Patrick breathes right into Richie’s ear like he’s proud of himself. “Now it doesn’t look suspicious.”

Richie, still not fully able to inhale and shaking with barely contained anger, glares up at Patrick from under his fringe and mutters, “Why do I get the feeling your version of ‘asking me out’ doesn’t involve a fucking picnic blanket?”

Patrick snickers again and pats the top of Richie’s head where he’s still doubled over, wheezing through the throbbing pain in his stomach. 

“See you tonight, loser.” He grins, waggling his fingers in goodbye as he saunters off with the rest of his group. Richie wants to scream after him, to demand to know what he means and just what the hell he’s planning, but his friends crowd around him and the opportunity is lost.

Besides, he thinks his voice would break if he tried.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it’s been such a long time! I hope you all have a great holiday :)

Richie doubts Patrick is going to show up on his doorstep. Richie doesn’t even think Patrick knows where he lives, and the threat of his parents being home would surely be enough to put him off. Patrick isn’t like most other people, but he has to have at least a basic understanding of the parents of sixteen year olds.

Even so, he can’t shake the feeling that, as he showers and dresses himself in pyjamas that night, he’s waiting for something.

Things had been fairly uneventful since he returned from school. His mom is away on a business trip so he and his father ate dinner together in the tiny kitchen, washing the dishes together afterwards. They don’t spend much time together, but Richie enjoys the odd hour here and there in his parents’ company.

He says goodnight around nine and retreats to his bedroom, planning to spend the next few hours in a stupor of music and browsing social media. The prospect of Patrick showing up unannounced, uninvited, expecting things Richie doesn’t think he can give, has him on edge. His fingers keep tapping against the side of his phone. He forgot to take his adderall today. 

Half an hour passes without note; Richie always blasts his music at near full volume so, at first, he doesn’t hear the scratching outside his window. It happens completely by chance that he looks up at the right moment and sees Patrick Hockstetter’s face hovering outside the glass like a ghost.

Richie shrieks, the sound completely inaudible to himself over the music playing. His heart leaps against his chest and he scrambles backwards, legs getting so tangled in his cover that he falls halfway off his bed and has to catch himself with his hands flat against the floor. Patrick smirks, a cruel, satisfied smile.

Richie yanks his earphones out in time to hear his father calling his name. “You alright up there?” He asks, sounding concerned and confused. If he were to come up the stairs right now and step into Richie’s room, what would he think of the entire situation? It isn’t like Richie could quickly explain, ‘oh, this is Patrick, my bully of the last five years. He’s here to hook up.’

Patrick taps on the window again, nodding towards the latch. Richie contemplates saying no; it would be so easy to refuse, to draw the curtains and just wait it out until Patrick had no choice but to leave.

But would he? What if Patrick just climbed down again and went to the door? What if Patrick said something or did something to Richie’s father. Richie decides that he can’t let that happen, and so his only real choice is to just let Patrick in. He’s just making sure that his bully and his father stay totally separate, he consoles himself.

“Yep!” Richie replies, voice unnaturally high and unconvincing. “Just tripped!”

His father doesn’t respond to that - Richie can picture him shaking his head or rolling his eyes fondly - so Richie heads towards the window somewhat reluctantly. What is he letting himself in for, if he lets Patrick in? Nothing good can come of a relationship with Patrick fucking Hockstetter, that’s for sure.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Richie hisses as soon as the window is open. “Are you crazy? What if my dad had heard you? What if you got the wrong window?”

Patrick heavens himself in through the window and topples onto the floor, another crash that makes Richie wince. Now that Patrick is inside, Richie can see that he had been clinging onto the windowsill and using protruding bricks to climb upwards. He must be much stronger than he looks to be able to do that…

Richie swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Then I guess I’d have fucked your dad.” Patrick shrugs, then laughs at Richie’s disgusted expression. Is this what all his friends have to deal with every time Richie opens his dumb mouth? If so, he feels a rush of sympathy for them.

“Dude,” Richie complains, his nose wrinkling. “Gross.”

Now that Patrick is properly inside, he snoops around Richie’s room like he owns the place. Richie should probably stop him, but he can’t help but feel there isn’t anything Patrick Hockstetter could find that Richie would have to feel bad about. He stands back and lets Patrick do his thing, watching him cautiously in case all of this has been an elaborate ploy to fake Richie’s suicide.

“You’ve got a nice house here, Tozier, you know that?” He says, distracted. Richie wonders about Patrick’s house; he’s never been, and now he’s realising that in all the years he’s known Patrick, he still has no clue where he lives. He knows Bowers’ house is pretty nice: big, if a little rundown and muddy, but nice nonetheless. Belch and Victor Criss both live around the mediocre neighbourhood in Derry, near Eddie. Patrick… Richie has no idea.

“Thanks,” he says, not really answering the question. “Glad it meets your standards. Maybe next time you can host, huh?”

It’s a joke that falls flat, and in the silence that follows Patrick finishes his evaluation of Richie’s bedroom. Richie’s heart pounds against his ribcage, a mixture of fear and arousal making his head spin. 

“You really took a chance on this, y’know?” Richie breathes, looking up at Patrick from under his fringe. “Like, what if you’d come all this way and I said no?”

Patrick watches him, tilts his head in a way that somehow makes him seem even more threatening. The cut of his jawline is sharp and cast in shadows, his eyes look black in the darkness of Richie’s bedroom. He steps closer and closer still as Richie backs away from him, until the backs of Richie’s knees meet the edge of the bed and he sits down heavily. 

“I can be pretty persuasive.” Patrick murmurs, not wasting any time. He climbs onto the bed, knees on either side of Richie’s hips, and pushes him down with a hand splayed wide on Richie’s chest. Richie is suddenly flat on his back, legs spread, Patrick Hockstetter moving on top of him.

“What, you gonna hit me again?” Richie smiles bitterly at his own joke. Patrick snorts, but doesn’t even deign to acknowledge it otherwise. 

There’s a sharp pain in his neck where Patrick’s teeth leave little indents in the skin, and then a wet, warm tongue moving over the fresh bruise. Richie helps and then smacks a hand over his mouth to keep quiet. His father can’t come in here right now– Richie would die of embarrassment.

Plus, Patrick would probably kill both of them to keep anyone from finding out.

Richie can tell Patrick is laughing from the way his chest vibrates. He bats Richie’s hand away and instead uses his own to cover Richie’s mouth; it’s bigger and presses down harder until Richie can hardly breathe. Patrick’s skin tastes like bitter tobacco. When Patrick kisses him, it feels like a surrender.

Patrick’s fingers fumble at the buckle of his belt without preamble, and Richie would make a joke about him not being able to last if he weren’t struggling to breathe out of his nose, his cock is hard despite himself, trapped against the elastic waistband of his pyjama bottoms. He rocks himself as subtly as he can manage against Patrick’s thigh, grinding into the friction desperately.

“What, you gonna get yourself off like that?” Patrick hisses cruelly, a sneer marring his face. “Gonna ride my leg like a little bitch?”

Richie’s cheeks flush warm with humiliation and Patrick’s hand over his mouth stifles a choked moan as Patrick grinds his thigh down hard into Richie’s cock. Patrick buffs out an amused breath. 

“Gonna come just from that, bitch?” Patrick’s knuckles brush against Richie’s stomach in a regular motion and, although Richie can’t see it, he knows exactly what Patrick is doing.

It’s somewhat of a shock to Richie when Patrick lets go of his dick and slides a hand under Richie’s pyjama top until it bunches up around his neck. _This is the catch,_ Richie thinks, _this is when he pulls out a wooden stake or whatever and stabs me through the heart._

But he doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he stoops low and runs the flat of his tongue over Richie’s nipple. It’s wet and warm and so weird, so foreign, that Richie’s hips jerk up and he cries out involuntarily. Patrick slaps a hand over his mouth again, nails digging into Richie’s cheeks. It doesn’t seem to be the threat of getting caught that spurs on his actions as much as the opportunity to manhandle Richie.

“Slow– slow down, Jesus.” Richie complains breathlessly once he’s managed to wrestle Patrick’s hand away from his mouth. Patrick’s eyes are dark and dangerous, his lips pulled up at the corners into an eerie, wide grin. Even despite this, Richie still wants to bury his hands in Patrick’s hair.

“Fuck that,” Patrick whispers harshly, forcing his knee between Richie’s legs again and pressing it into his erection, teetering on the edge of too much. “We already did things your way last time. Now it’s my turn.”

“The fuck is this, kindergarten?” Richie snarks, but some of the attitude is lost in a pathetic whine. His fingernails scrabble on Patrick’s back when he lines up his leg with Richie’s dick just right. The feeling is incredible: the drag of friction burns and Richie’s senses are completely overwhelmed with Patrick. He’s all that Richie can see or smell. He can still taste Patrick on his tongue, and the pressure of his body, solid and heavy above Richie, is heady.

Richie’s going to come.

“Fuck,” he gasps, throwing his head back and squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m gonna come.”

Out of nowhere, there’s a sharp pain on his throat and Richie’s eyes fly open to see that Patrick has latched onto his throat, has sunk his teeth in over Richie’s Adam’s apple. There’s going to be a dark purple bruise there come tomorrow, and it will be impossible to cover up. For some reason, that’s what pushes Richie over the edge. His body goes tense and rigid; he shudders when he comes, hips jumping against Patrick’s leg, a dark, damp patch staining the fabric of his pyjama bottoms. Patrick laughs breathlessly like he doesn’t really believe what he’s seeing. When he next glances up at Richie, he looks feral.

“Stay the fuck down.” He hisses when Richie props himself up on his elbows. Patrick splays his fingers wide over Richie’s chest and shoves him down violently, crawling further up his body so that he’s straddling Richie’s chest.

Patrick’s strokes his cock fast and so hard that it _must_ hurt. It’s right there, right in front of Richie’s face, so close he can smell the sweat and sex of it. He’s close enough to touch, to taste. It would be the first dick he’s ever touched apart from his own; does he really want his first time - what remains of it, at least - to be taken by _Patrick Hockstetter?_

Then Patrick is gasping and his fingers are clawing at Richie’s lips. “Open your mouth,” he demands, leaving no room for argument. “I wanna come in it.”

“What the fuck,” Richie slurs, exhausted from the most intense orgasm he’s ever had. It isn’t a question and he isn’t denying Patrick’s request, but the way Patrick glares at him, anyone would think he had. 

“Listen to me, you little bitch. We did things slow and sweet last time. Now it’s _my fucking turn,_ remember, so if I wanna come in your mouth then I fucking will.” He’s panting now, cheeks flushed and forehead lined with sweat. Richie lets his mouth fall open without another word, revelling in the look of approval Patrick gives him.

The next second, Patrick is coming into his mouth. It’s pretty much exactly what Richie expected: warm and slimy, salty and absolutely disgusting. Some of it gets over his cheeks and his lips and he can only imagine how he looks right now. The worst thing is, he can’t even blame Patrick for wanting him to do this. Richie imagines coming on his partner’s face and his soft cock gives a valiant, interested twitch. 

Patrick didn’t give him any instructions on what to do afterwards, but Richie figures spitting it out onto the floor now would not be sexy. He squeezes his eyes shut and cringes as he swallows, using his cover to wipe the rest of it off his face. Patrick watches him, leaning back on his haunches and smiling in satisfaction.

“Taste good?” Patrick taunts, tucking his dick back into his pants. Richie’s cheeks rush with warmth and colour.

“Fuck you,” he mutters half heartedly, flicking Patrick’s thigh. “Get off, you’re crushing me, idiot.”

Patrick disentangles himself from Richie and the bed with the elegance of a ballet dancer. His long legs must make it easy to look graceful whilst doing things that would usually have Richie tripping all over the place.

As Patrick straightens his clothes out, Richie watches him with shameful interest. There’s a thought bubbling at the surface of his mind, wanting to force its way out. Richie wants to ask but he knows that, when he does, nothing will be the same anymore.

Fuck it, he thinks in the end. Things are already screwed up as it is. What’s a little more?

“That thing that you said,” he blurts out, hoping the darkness of his room will hide his humiliated flush. “About us taking turns. Did you mean it?”

Patrick raises an eyebrow, mocking and surprised somehow all at once. 

“What are you talking about, Tozier?” He asks, smirking. Asshole just wants to make Richie say it out loud.

“I’m just saying,” Richie forces out from between gritted teeth. “We could. If you wanted. Like, one for me, one for you, or whatever. So we both get what we want.”

Patrick is silent for a moment, contemplating. Richie fidgets under the covers, picking at the skin around his nails, a habit his mother has been trying to get him to stop for years.

Then he says, “What makes you think I want to keep touching you, freak?”

Richie flounders, utterly embarrassed. He wants to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over his head, he wants Patrick to leave, he wants this to all have been a dream.

Then Patrick laughs, sharp and loud– too loud. “Just kidding.” He says. “Sounds good. One for me, one for you. See you around, loser.”

Richie watches as Patrick slides open the window and pulls himself through it. He listens out for the thump of a body falling to the ground but it never comes, and he can only assume Patrick got home safely. He knows he should get up and close the window, because it isn’t warm outside and if Patrick can get up then who knows what other psychopath could get in, but he really doesn’t have the energy after everything that just happened to get out of bed.

He flops back against his pillow and rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes. What the fuck has he gotten himself into?

***

Richie is horrified, the next morning, when Patrick saunters into his biology classroom. Richie shares this class with Bill and Eddie both, and it’s his favourite lesson on his timetable. Patrick hasn’t been in any of the classes they’ve had so far, which either means he got sent to a lower class or he just skipped all the other lessons up until this point.

With Patrick, Richie wouldn’t be surprised at either. 

The other losers have been weirdly attentive all day, asking if he’s okay and offering to buy him food. It made Richie horribly uncomfortable at first, certain that they knew somehow, they’d found out, they thought he was disgusting, or worse, a _victim…_

But then Beverly said, “They’ll get what’s coming to them one day.” And Richie had remembered the fight yesterday. Of course they would assume his cagey behaviour was thanks to his close encounter with Patrick– the violent one, at least.

He just about had a heart attack at one point when Stan stopped him with a wide eyed stare and brushed his fingertips over the bruise on his neck, sure that he’d been found out. He had done an alright job with his mother’s make up in the morning, and it’s only barely visible if someone is looking for it.

“Shit,” Stan had looked pained, like the bruise on Richie’s skin was hurting him as well. “Did Hockstetter do that? Did he choke you?”

Richie hadn’t known what to say to that other than, ‘yes, but in a sexy way’, so he elected to stay silent. Thankfully, Bill had jumped in to save the day as usual.

“Patrick fucking suh-sucks.” He said. It took everything Richie had not to burst out laughing. 

And now– this. His friends are going to think Patrick has a personal vendetta against Richie or something. 

Eddie catches his eye over the desk in between them and mouths something that Richie doesn’t quite catch, looking horrified. Richie knows exactly how he feels; there’s too much white noise in his head at the moment for him to be able to hear what the teacher is saying. He only tunes in when Patrick starts heading in his direction.

“Dude,” Eddie hisses quickly. “Did you know he was in this class?” 

Richie shakes his head frantically, knowing Patrick has seen the exchange and that it’s too late now to play it cool.

“Scram,” Patrick tells the kid sitting next to Richie, who’s looking up at him in terror. She doesn’t hesitate to move, leaving her seat empty for Patrick to slide into.

Richie looks wide eyed at Eddie and Bill, who are now both watching him with matching expressions of confusion. Eddie signs a cross over his chest. Richie feels exactly the same fucking way. 

“What are you doing?” Richie whispers, waiting until their teacher’s back is turned. Patrick doesn’t reply, but his gaze sinks lower, down to Richie’s throat where he’s done as good a job as possible at covering up the gigantic fucking hickey Patrick left last night. Patrick smiles.

“What do you mean, partner? You don’t wanna work with me?”

Richie looks up in time to see their teacher scrawling the instructions for their joint project on the board. His heart sinks.

“Do I have a choice?” He asks bitterly, sarcasticically. He isn’t expecting it when Patrick leans so close that his breath ghosts across Richie’s ear, ticklish and tantalising. 

“What do you think?” He replies.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! It’s been a stressful few weeks haha. I hope you enjoy though! <3

Richie doesn’t get much chance to hang out with all of the Losers at the same time anymore. In between studying, working and spending obligatory time with their families, Richie’s friends are often away doing their own thing. That just makes the opportunities they do have to all be together even more special.

After a long time communicating back and forth, they’ve managed to all meet up in Ben’s house. It’s framed as a study group, but everyone knows there will be absolutely no studying involved. Richie packs his cigarettes and an extra can of body spray in case Ben’s mom comes home early.

By the time he arrives, the others are already waiting for him and his phone has buzzed in his pocket three times. He’s resolutely not answering it, because he knows it’s Patrick and he’s not letting his pseudo boyfriend ruin his day for him.

Because that’s a thing he’s been thinking about lately: Patrick, and the nature of their relationship. Patrick is not his boyfriend, that much Richie is certain of. They aren’t in a loving, committed relationship, but they  _ are _ hooking up - albeit in secret - and they  _ do  _ have an arrangement. That, Richie decides, makes Patrick his fuck buddy or, the label he prefers that doesn’t make him regret all his life choices, his pseudo boyfriend.

But he’s not thinking about that right now. He’s here to spend a day with his friends, to have fun like they used to before life becomes too stressful.

“He lives!” Bev cries as soon as she sees Richie emerge through the doorway. She’s laid back on Ben’s bed, shoulders propped up on the headboard with Eddie lain across her feet. He raises his head when Richie comes in.

“You’re late, asshole.” He complains, charming as ever. “We had to decide on a movie without you.”

“As long as it’s not a horror, I’m cool with it.” Stan and Mike exchange guilty looks. Eddie smirks. Bill pauses awkwardly where he’s fiddling with his laptop. “I hate you guys.” Richie sighs miserably, flopping down on the bed next to Beverly. 

“You’re monopolising my space.” Ben complains, flicking Richie’s ankle from where he’s sat on the floor.

“I’m monopolising your mom.” Richie retorts without his usual gusto. Ben frowns.

“I’m not sure you know what that word means–” he tries to say.

“Shut up, dickwads.” Eddie speaks over them, irritated voice drowning everyone else out. “The film’s starting and I don’t wanna miss it because of Richie’s stupid ‘your mom’ joke.”

“Not stupid and you’re welcome, Eds.” Richie murmurs, but stops talking anyway.

He tries to enjoy the film, even if he has to curl into Beverly to avoid screeching at the jump scares. She snickers and prods his side to startle him every now and then, but other than that she lets him hog most of the bed. 

The third time during the movie that Richie’s phone buzzes, everyone groans in unison and turns to glare at him. Richie sort of feels like he’s in a movie theatre.

“Either answer it or turn it off, idiot.” Stan tells him, eyes narrowed suspiciously. Richie blanches. He doesn’t want to read whatever Patrick has to say in front of all his friends, but it’s not like him to ignore a message and if he turns his phone off now they’ll know something is wrong.

“Jeez, Staniel, calm your tits.” Richie replies, narrowly avoiding Bev’s elbow to his side. He fishes his phone out of his pocket deliberately slowly, practising his poker face before he’s even turned it on. Patrick’s name flashes on the screen like a warning sign, and he does his best to hide it.

_ ‘Stop ignoring me,’  _ Patrick has written, with no emoticon or indication that he’s being friendly. Patrick is never totally friendly, Richie realises, but it would still be nice to know Patrick isn’t waiting for Richie to arrive so that he can kill him.

Another message pings through as Richie wonders whether or not to reply. His heart drops to his stomach.

‘ _I’m trying to compliment you. You have a really nice house. Kitchen’s a little small, but there’d probably be room to fuck if you bent over.’_

_ ‘What the fuck????’  _ Richie types back, confused and suddenly frightened. Is Patrick bluffing? Richie wouldn’t put him past Patrick to break into his house and then brag about it, but what game is he playing right now?

_ ‘Your dad let me in, after I told him about our joint project! Kinda hotter than you. He’s making me coffee.’ _

That’s it. That’s fucking  _ it.  _ Patrick cannot possibly push his way into Richie’s life anymore than he already has, Richie won’t let him. From time to time they’ll sleep together, whatever, but going to his house while he isn’t even there? Speaking to his father?  _ Taunting _ him about it? That’s crossing a line.

“I have to go.” Richie says through gritted teeth. Bill groans, arm outstretched lazily to pause the film. Eddie’s head shoots up as he narrows his eyes at Richie.

“Where are you going?” He asks warily. Richie notices, from the corner of his eye, Stan watching him with a calculating stare.

“My dad just texted. He needs me home.” Richie thinks up on the spot.

“Your dad never needs you home.” Eddie objects, hair sticking up at odd angles. Richie leans over to pinch his cheeks.

“Aw, don’t worry Eds. You’re still my fave guy.”

“Shut up, asshole.” Eddie’s cheeks flush pink. “And don’t think we’re telling you how it ends!”

“Not interested!” Richie calls over his shoulder as he jogs down the stairs. They know each other’s houses well enough by now not to need a guide to the door. Richie just shuts it gently behind him before taking off down the street, hooking his leg over his bike and riding the slope of the hill.

He doesn’t know what he expects to find when he gets home. His father’s dead body strewn out on the kitchen floor? Patrick nowhere to be seen, this having all been a joke? Or Patrick, in the doorway, with his dick out?

Richie doesn’t know which one would be worse. 

To his distress, there is a light on in the kitchen when Richie turns the corner of his street. He leaves his bike propped up in the driveway even though his father always complains that it blocks his car and hurries to the front door, fingers fumbling with the key.

Patrick is the first thing he sees when he steps inside. 

“Oh my God,” Richie mumbles to himself, dread coiling like a snake in his stomach. How long has Patrick been here?

Patrick is reclining in a chair at the table, arms crossed over his chest. When he hears the click of the door, his head rolls on his neck and he smiles, wide and unsettling.

“Oh, Richie!” His father steps out of the kitchen suddenly, startling him. He sucks in a surprised, shaky breath. “You’re back! I was just about to call you. Patrick’s here to work on your project. I’m surprised you forgot.”

What can he say to that? ‘No, actually dad, Patrick is a lying creep and you should kick him out?’ Absolutely not.

Instead he grits his teeth and smiles, irritated. He notices Patrick stifling a snicker but there’s nothing he can do about it in front of his father. 

“Sorry, my bad. Won’t happen again.”

His father shrugs, unaffected as he is about most things to do with Richie’s schoolwork. He loops his finger through the handle of Patrick’s mug and draws it towards himself. Richie waits until he’s disappeared from the room before he explodes.

“What are you doing here?” Richie hisses, both furious and terrified at the sight in front of him. Seeing Patrick just sitting there, right at the table like it’s somewhere he even remotely belongs, has Richie feeling like he’s in the Twilight Zone. “What are you  _ doing? _ Do you know how fucking  _ risky _ this is?”

“Jesus, Tozier,” Patrick rolls his eyes, like Richie is no more irritating than a fly buzzing around him, one that, apparently, he can’t be bothered to shoo away. “What’s your problem? Your dad let me in, for Christ’s sake. In case you’ve forgotten, we actually have a project to work on. Ringing any bells? I called you like, four times.”

Five, but who’s counting?

Richie deflates. He’d been so shocked and uncomfortable at the sight of Patrick in the same room as his literal father that he’d plain forgotten the schoolwork they have to do together. 

“Fuck’s wrong with you?” Patrick continues in a conspiratorial whisper, stooping low so that Richie’s dad wouldn’t hear if he were eavesdropping on their conversation. “I thought you were supposed to be the fun one?”

And, ouch, Richie can’t pretend that that doesn’t hit a weak spot. He  _ is _ supposed to be the fun one, isn’t he? Or maybe not fun, because that spot is reserved for the one and only Beverly Marsh, but he’s definitely supposed to be the funny one. He doesn’t feel much like being funny right now. He doesn’t think he can turn this into a joke.

“That’s rich, coming from you.” Richie mutters, kicking the ground and wishing his laptop would spontaneously combust in front of him so he’d have an excuse to kick Patrick out. “Since when do you care about your schoolwork? I just assumed I’d get us an A and we would have as little interaction as possible.”

“Wow,” Patrick uncoils the length of his body along Richie’s bed, propping his head up in his palm and watching Richie with a sharp look in his eye. “You’re bitchy today. Something happen?”

“Yeah,” Richie confirms huffily. “I got back to see you’d broken into my house. Seriously, dude, you were drinking coffee with my fucking dad! Don’t you see how screwed up that is?”

“Why, because I’m boning his son?”

“No,” Richie deadpans, although that is absolutely the reason. “Because the other day he said he should call the cops on whoever left ‘all those bruises’ on me. That’s you, by the way, in case you fucking forgot.”

“Oh Jesus,” Patrick groans, loud and long suffering, flopping back onto Richie’s bed and running his long, slender fingers through his hair. “There’s no way you’re still pissed about that. Are you just upset ‘cause you think I wanna fuck your dad more than you? Because I’ll still save some time for you, Sugar–”

“Don’t be gross.” Richie winces, wrinkling up his nose and tapping out a few angry google searches about generic biology topics.

“C’mon,” Patrick changes tactic abruptly, his voice becoming wheedling and whiny. He throws his legs over the side of the bed and saunters across the room to loom behind Richie, palms flat on the desk either side of his chair. “I’ll make it up to you. It’s your turn this time, right? What do you wanna do? You want me to suck you off, blow you? Hey, maybe I could fingerfuck you?”

“I thought you were here to do some actually work, huh? Or were you just that excited to see my father?” Patrick laughs, delighted to have Richie back in the game. Richie sighs; whilst all of that sounds tempting, and an orgasm could probably go a long way to curing his stress right now, he’s just not in the mood. He’s pissed he had to cut his time with the Losers short, he’s pissed Patrick just decided to introduce himself to Richie’s dad without consulting Richie first. 

God, what is he, a spurned boyfriend? Why is he acting like they need to improve their communication skills when the only element of their arrangement is sex? Maybe the term 'pseudo boyfriend’ is psychologically misleading.

“Maybe I already got him off before you got back?” Patrick suggests with a lecherous laugh. His wide hand settles on the back of Richie’s neck and slides around to the front, to his chest below the neckline of his t-shirt and then further down until he’s rolling Richie’s nipple between his forefinger and his thumb.

“Now it’s your turn.” Patrick whispers into his ear.

Richie’s body jerks when Patrick brushes a finger over his nipple, back and forth in a slow, massaging gesture. Part of him wants to arch his back, push himself forward into the sensation. The other part–

“No,” He says, voice trembling, not firm like he hoped it would be. “Patrick, stop.”

Patrick doesn’t stop. Instead he slips his other hand around Richie’s neck so that his palm covers Richie’s throat; it’s similar to how they did things last time and Richie shivers, both turned on and scared at the thought that Patrick may genuinely be imagining killing him.

“I said  _ no.”  _ Richie cries, batting Patrick’s hands away in a frenzied motion. He shoves his chair back, catching Patrick in the stomach with it before he stands up and paces over to the other side of the room. “I’m not in the fucking mood. Why don’t you just get out of here if you don’t want to do any actual work?”

Patrick’s face screws up into a scowl. He looks mean. He always looks mean, Richie figures, but whenever they’ve been together since whatever  _ this _ is started happening, he’s always seemed softer, calmer than usual. Now it’s like he’s reverted back to normal. Remembered hat he’s supposed to be the resident psychopath and is making up for lost time.

“No need to be such a fucking prude, Tozier.” Patrick snaps, suddenly intimidatingly tall. “Not like you’re the best option around, is it?”

Richie flushes with humiliated fury. He  _ knows _ that, Christ, like he doesn’t know that, but Patrick doesn’t get to verbally fucking assault him just for saying no. Richie isn’t going to let that happen.

“Then why are you here, huh? Just to fuck with me? If you can get laid with so many other people, what are you doing here Patrick?” Embarrassingly, Richie finds himself close to tears with no real idea why. This thing with Patrick has just really messed him up, he decides in the end, and he’s feeling conflicted over keeping secrets from his best friends. That’s all it is. It’s not like he cares what some asshole bully thinks of him. He’s not that desperate for validation.

Right?

“Just get out of here.” Richie says before Patrick can reply, staring intently at the ground so he doesn’t have to meet Patrick’s gaze. “I’ll do the assignment, I’ll say you did half, but I just want you to leave.”

There’s half a beat of silence in which they stand still in checkmate; it seems like Patrick is waiting for him to take it back, and Richie finds himself seriously considering it, but no, he decides ultimately. Richie isn’t budging.

“What the fuck ever,” Patrick says eventually, scornfully, rolling his eyes as he barges past Richie. “You’re not worth the trouble.”

Richie doesn’t trust Patrick to just leave without messing with anything downstairs so he half follows, sitting down on the stairs to watch through the bannister as he sweeps out of the house, making a grand gesture of slamming the door. Richie rests his forehead on his knees when it’s over, exhaling shakily. That didn’t go at all how he’d meant for it to go, but is he really to blame?

He hadn’t wanted to fool around. There’s nothing wrong with that. He was in a bad mood and maybe he took it out on Patrick a little, but Patrick was the reason he was in a bad mood in the first place. He could be with his friends right now, having a good time rather than reeling from his fight with his fuck buddy and this stupid biology project that he now has to do on his own.

God, today is not Richie’s day.

He doesn’t block Patrick’s number, even though he knows he should. He doesn’t even continue the project, because they have a while until that’s due in and he’s not in any state to think about homework right now.

Instead, he crawls into bed and curls up under the cover, trying and failing not to think about whatever the hell just happened. Unless he can avoid Patrick - which has proven to be difficult so far - school is going to be pretty awkward from now on.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing from Patrick’s perspective was actually really fun so I hope you enjoy it!

Patrick doesn’t usually get angry. People in school might think otherwise, but on the whole Patrick is more likely to be amused than irritated by any given thing. That doesn’t mean he won’t beat the shit out of people for whatever they’ve done, but that’s only because he enjoys it.

So, usually, Patrick is not a particularly angry person.

But he’s angry now. Confusion always makes him angry. If he can’t figure something or someone out he gets frustrated quickly, and that inevitably leads to him wanting to destroy something with his bare hands. At the moment, Richie Tozier is the puzzle Patrick is unable to solve, and it’s making him unbelievably fucking mad. 

Where does Richie get off, telling Patrick what to do like that? It’s not like anybody else is jumping at the chance to fuck the little bitch, so if anything he should be _grateful_ that Patrick wants him.

And that’s another puzzle that he can’t figure out, that he’s been ignoring for months now. Why _does_ he want Richie? There’s nothing particularly special about him. He’s attractive, sure, with his big eyes and his long, dark hair and his stupid fucking Hawaiian shirts that Patrick always wants to rip off his body. He’s young as well, inexperienced, which Patrick finds unbearably hot. If there’s one thing Patrick enjoys more than fucking, it’s fucking people who have never been fucked before, and Richie Tozier is the perfect example of that. 

So he’s cute, he’s down to mess around and he’s a virgin. Is that it? He’s also really fucking annoying, all the time. He’s a loud mouthed smartass. Even when his dumb jokes are kind of funny, Patrick still feels the urge to knock those ridiculous glasses off his face. So what is it about Richie Tozier that Patrick can’t get enough of? Why can’t he get the freak out of his head?

Showing up at his house is obviously not the best move. After the commotion it caused last time, Patrick has decided that messing with him like that is more trouble than it’s worth. Whilst it had been fun to see the panicked discomfort on his face when he realised Patrick had been making nice with his father, he does actually want Richie to get him off again and that won’t happen if the kid’s too busy screaming in his face. 

Despite everything that says it should be otherwise, it’s also really fucking difficult to get his attention at school. They don’t have a class together until next week and there’s no way Patrick is going to wait that long to get Tozier’s mouth on his cock. His loser friends are always hanging around, shooting Patrick dirty looks or huddling together like a group of penguins to avoid Henry and the others. He can’t exactly blame them - the last time they had a run in, at least half of them walked away with bruises - but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. The bitch with the red hair is with him whenever Tozier skips class and the asthmatic kid and the boy with the stutter walk home with him all the time. After school sometimes, Patrick has watched Richie through his bedroom window as he hangs out with the Jew and the homeschooled kid, doing fuck knows what. If Patrick didn’t know better - didn’t know _first hand -_ he might be worried that Richie was hooking up with one or both of them. The nasty, jealous part of him, when he sees them spending time together, wants to burst in and hurl them out of the house. It makes him want to push Richie down in front of everyone and Fuck his mouth until he’s crying, until everyone knows who Richie belongs to.

The nicer part of him wants to keep things a secret, because it’s what Richie wants and that way he has something to hold over the kid’s head if he ever gets too demanding.

The whole ‘your turn, my turn’ agreement had kind of thrown Patrick for a loop. He’s always known Tozier’s a fag - _takes one to know one,_ Patrick thinks with a predatory grin to himself - but he’d just assumed that he’d be the shameful, repressed type. He’d fuck around with Patrick a few times, feel guilty about it, come crawling back a few weeks later because he couldn’t help himself and the whole cycle would repeat and repeat. Richie being so on board with this, on board enough to suggest a system for their hook ups, is not something Patrick has ever come across before, and he has no clue how to react to it.

In all fairness, it’s a good idea. Tozier probably wants soft and sweet, and if it means that every so often Patrick gets to slap him around and stick his dick inside the kid then he’s fine with that as well. Patrick can’t wait until he can _actually_ fuck him; he thinks Richie will be a screamer. Everyone always is with Patrick inside them, but there’s something different about Richie. He’ll tear Patrick up as badly as Patrick will him.

All the thoughts about fucking Richie are getting him hard, and it would be really great if he could actually act on any of them. As it is, the prissy little bitch has been ignoring him since their argument in his bedroom when he’d kicked Patrick out. No one has ever spoken to Patrick like that before and gotten away unscathed, and he wants to rectify that as soon as possible, but more than that he just wants to touch Richie again. This realisation has Patrick’s skin crawling.

 _‘Ignore me all you want but you know you’re just going to come back for more.’_ Patrick sends. He knows Richie has been reading his messages even if he hasn’t replied to a single one, and for some reason that’s the most infuriating thing of all. 

Then, for good measure, he sends, _‘No one’ll fuck you as well as I can whore.’_ And slides his phone back into his pocket, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Patrick and Richie are very similar, he supposes, in the sense that they’re both masters at commanding attention. They do this in drastically different ways, of course, but being ignored has never sat well with Patrick and he doesn’t want Richie thinking he can keep on getting away with being disrespectful like that just because Patrick sucked his cock one time. It’ll start to tarnish his reputation.

“Dude, what’s wrong with you today?” Henry appears from nowhere at his side, shoulder leaning against the row of lockers like a pissed girlfriend. Patrick has to refrain from rolling his eyes; Henry is tolerable only when he’s scheming or beating people up.

“Tired,” Patrick grunts, hoping he won’t have to make conversation if he stays monosyllabic. On the other side of the hallway, a little further down the corridor, Patrick notices Tozier and his circle of freak friends are making their way towards him. As he watches, Richie pulls out his phone, frowns imperceptibly and slips it back into his pocket unanswered. Frustration flares up in Patrick’s chest like a flame.

“And bored,” he amends suddenly. “Let me have this one?” He pushes himself away from the wall before Henry can figure out what he means and approaches the group slowly, like a hunter approaching the body of an animal they just shot. Richie is the first to see him coming– Patrick hopes that’s because he was looking.

 _Fine,_ thinks Patrick bitterly. _If the bitch wants to play hard to get then I’ll bite. He wants some attention? I’ll give him some fucking attention._

“‘Sup, faggots?” He saunters forward until he’s toe to toe with Bill Denbrough, the supposed leader of their pack. He doesn’t miss how Richie subtly steps in front of the tiny kid with asthma, and sharp, stabbing jealousy makes him impulsively cruel. “You having a nice day?”

“Get out of the wuh-way, Hockstetter.” Denbrough stammers, the tips of his ears turning red with the effort. Patrick sneers, eyes locking with Richie… who’s glaring daggers at the floor. Fuck. Fine. Patrick will just have to get under his skin.

“What about you, Wheezy?” Patrick ignores Bill’s valiant attempt to stand up for his friends, instead circling round the group until he’s cosied up next to Eddie Kaspbrak. Bill looks at him with defiant confusion as though he’s trying to figure out what Patrick’s game is and failing, and Richie–

Richie’s head has snapped up in surprised worry, his lips are parted and his eyes appear ten times rounder behind the thick glass of his lenses. Patrick wants to grab him by the hair and drag him into a kiss, press him face first against the lockers and fuck his thighs, suck a huge, dark bruise into the side of his neck so he won’t be able to pretend he has nothing to do with Patrick ever again.

As it is, he can only grin wolfishly at the welcomed attention.

“What?” Kaspbrak asks, surprised and scared. Patrick claps a hand down on his shoulder a little too hard to be chummy and shakes him around, enjoying the way Richie’s hands curl into fists. His cheeks flush a light, dusty pink and sometimes, if he’s really angry, his glasses will even fog up. It’s cute, like watching a kitten try to take on an enemy even though everybody else knows it stands no chance. 

“What, don’t tell me you’re having trouble hearing now?” Patrick taps his tongue against his teeth, fingernails digging in harshly to Eddie’s skin through his clothing. “Are you going deaf, Wheezy? Does someone need to let your mom know?”

At this prospect, Eddie’s face goes deathly pale and his hands fumble at his waist for where his inhaler is tucked into his jeans. Patrick is planning to wait until he’s going it poised and ready at his mouth and then to slap it out of his hand, maybe stomp on it a little once it’s on the floor as well. 

He doesn’t get to do any of this, however, because Richie snags Eddie’s wrist with his hand and tugs the boy behind him. Then he pushes forward angrily and shoves Patrick backwards, hard.

“Knock it off,” he complains, eyes blazing. Patrick wants to fucking ruin him. “Pick on someone your own size.”

“Aw,” Patrick coos, reaching out to pinch Richie’s cheek only to have his hand slapped away before he can touch him. “Did baby run out of funny jokes for today?”

“Leave us alone, you fucking queer.” Richie spits. He looks surprised as the words leave his mouth and admittedly even his friends look taken aback, but Patrick’s temper flares. Even if he wasn’t already pissed off, he couldn’t let Richie get away with talking to him like that in front of Henry or the other losers. He may as well wear a sign that says, ‘pussy’.

What is it about Richie that gets under his skin so bad?

Patrick reacts within seconds, grabbing Richie around the neck and slamming him into the row of lockers at his back. It’s frighteningly similar to the position they were in just last week and Patrick wonders if they are doomed to go round and round in circles, constantly on the move but going nowhere, stagnant and ruined.

He realises with a sick jolt of surprise that he’s hard. He has Tozier pinned to the wall with a hand around his throat, and his dick is hard in his pants. He wants to laugh. Instead, he slaps Richie’s cheek with his other hand hard enough to have the kid’s face swinging to the side and cracking against the locker behind him. 

“Say that shit to me again and I’ll break your fucking nose, okay?” He hisses, ignoring the fingers grappling at his bare arms, trying to tug him away from Tozier. They feel like spiders crawling all over his skin, inconveniences but ultimately inconsequential. 

He loosens his grip around Richie’s neck in case he’s trying to reply - _not trying to breathe, I don’t give a shit if he chokes, I_ don’t - and Richie–

Richie spits in his face.

It’s not the worst thing he could have done. As Richie watches with wide eyes, face stony and furious, Patrick runs his fingers through the saliva dripping down his cheek and sucks them into his mouth. Henry groans behind him.

“Jesus, get off him before you catch something.” He complains, hooking a finger in the neckline of Patrick’s t-shirt and urging him backwards. He lets go of Richie reluctantly and steps away, observing the way the kid’s friends rush towards him in a tight, protective huddle. It’s so strange; they care so much about him that they would subject themselves to Henry’s wrath for him. Patrick doesn’t want to know what that feels like.

“See you round, Tozier.” Patrick tells him, anger still simmering low in his stomach. He means it; Richie might have a problem with Patrick appearing in his house without his knowledge, but in no way does that rule out showing up at his front door. Unannounced. At two in the morning.

But then Richie is narrowing his eyes and clutching his face. His cheek is flushed red and sore looking, and there’s a thin trail of blood from his nose to the top of his lip. “Don’t fucking count on it.” He spits at Patrick, and looks so wildly ferocious in that moment that it takes Patrick’s breath away. He’s beautiful like that, bloodied and hurt and angry. 

Patrick watches Richie and his friends disappear round the corner until long after Henry and the others have left. He stands there and watches an empty corridor whilst he should be in calculus, finds himself hoping that Richie will come back and tell Patrick that it’s alright, they can forget about the whole thing, that they’re even. 

He doesn’t. The corridor stays empty. Eventually, Patrick slinks away.

***

So it turns out that beating up the guy you want to fuck is not very beneficial for getting into his pants. If Patrick thought Richie was ignoring him before, it’s nothing compared to now.

Richie won’t even _look_ at him in the corridor. They’ll pass each other and he’ll set his jaw, fix his eyes on some empty spot right in front of him and march forward until Patrick is behind him, leering after him to hide his frustration with the whole thing. He’s also stopped reading Patrick’s messages - either that or he’s turned off read receipts - so Patrick has no way of communicating with him outside of class.

And that doesn’t go too well either.

Richie is already in the classroom when Patrick walks through the door. He’s sitting at what Patrick has come to think of as _their_ desk, with his textbook out and biros scattered across the surface, but this time someone else is sitting in Patrick’s seat. The stuttering freak, Bill Denbrough, is sitting where Patrick should be, and when he walks inside both boys look up just in time to glare at him. He meets their gaze and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from doing something.

Fine. If that’s the way Richie wants to play this, Patrick can give back just as much as he gets.

“Move,” he grunts at the girl sitting next to Eddie Kasprack. She opens her mouth as though to object, takes one look at Patrick and changes her mind. Eddie watches him take a seat as the girl moves to Denbrough’s old desk, like this is some game of musical chairs.

Eddie doesn’t speak to him, but Patrick notices his hand creeping towards his rucksack, and seconds later he’s retrieving his inhaler. It releases a burst of bitter air as he sucks on the nozzle and then his shoulders droop. He’s no more relaxed but he can breathe again, which must be a relief for him. If only Patrick wasn’t such an asshole.

“Hey there, Wheezy.” Patrick grins, leaning far closer than necessary to murmur into Eddie’s ear. He jerks away from Patrick in a moment of panicked surprise, managing to stay in his seat by clinging to the edge of their table. When Patrick looks over the kid’s head, he sees both Richie and Bill watching him with twin murderous expressions.

“What are you doing?” Eddie hisses back at him, keeping his eyes trained to their teacher’s back. There’s a moment of silence between them then, brief but laden with significance, and Patrick finds himself dreading whatever Eddie is about to say next. Maybe this was a mistake– maybe he should have tried to torment Tozier in another way.

“Are you trying to get back at Richie?” Eddie asks, advancing from a whisper to a low mutter. He sounds distant, like he doesn’t really want to be talking to Patrick, but he also sounds curious. It’s that curiosity that has Patrick’s palms sweating. He swallows carefully and starts clicking the knuckles of his right hand. Eddie looks on with an increasingly nervous disposition, leg twitching up and down under the table.

“Now, why would I want to do that?” Patrick asks, genuinely interested even though he asks the question in a threatening tone. Eddie flinches away from the feeling of Patrick’s warm breath against his ear and shoots him a dirty glower, the first time he’s actually looked at Patrick since he sat down.

“Because he called you a queer earlier?” He hisses angrily, but it’s clear that it’s more of a question than an observation. Patrick’s pulse jumps– of course that’s what Eddie was talking about. How the hell would he know about any of the other stuff? It isn’t like Richie would be eager to tell his friends that he sucks their bully’s cock in his spare time. 

Patrick tries to think of something to say, anything that won’t make him seem like a pussy, anything that isn’t this agonising nothingness stretching out into an awkward, stagnant silence, but he finds that he can find nothing. Instead, he licks his palm and pats Eddie’s cheek twice: much softer than how he’d struck Richie earlier, but it does the job. Eddie squeaks and reads backwards, wiping frantically at his face with the sleeve of his jumper. Their teacher turns slowly with a withering sigh. 

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” She asks, pen poised inches from the whiteboard in front of her. Eddie stays quiet, deathly pale, lips trembling. Patrick risks a glance at Richie and smirks when he sees that the kid is pretty far from pale himself. His cheeks are flushed a pretty red colour and his fingers are tapping out a rhythm onto the desk. He stops as soon as he sees Patrick looking.

“No problem, ma’am,” Patrick answers eventually, if only to get her attention away from him. He leans back in his chair as class returns to normal, and Eddie shuffles his seat as far away from Patrick’s as he can. 

The sound of a chair scraping against the floor grabs the attention of everybody in the class, and Patrick has to sit still and silent as Richie pushes his way past the other desks to get to the door. Denbrough looks like he’s contemplating running after him, and Patrick feels a hot surge of jealousy that takes him by surprise. He’s never felt jealous of somebody else before– why would he? But now… he does. Bill Denbrough shouldn’t get to have anything that Patrick doesn’t have with Richie. Doesn’t he know that Richie isn’t his? Does Patrick have to mark him up a bit for people to get the message?

Without thinking, Patrick is standing up and heading for the exit as well. Nobody except Eddie and Bill, Patrick is sure, even notice that he leaves.

He catches up with Richie in the corridor outside, on the way to the bathroom. It’s pretty easy to slip inside after him; he doesn’t turn around until the very last moment.

Patrick gets Richie pressed up against the wall as soon as the door has swung fully shut, one hand tangled in his hair and the other pressed flat to the wall next to his head. It’s difficult not to be turned on in a position like this, and Patrick grinds his dick against Richie’s hip almost without thinking. It’s only when he feels Richie’s hands bunched up into fists, pushing against his chest, pushing him _away,_ that he takes a step back.

“What the fuck?” Richie hisses vitriolically. “What are you _doing?_ We’re in public!” 

“Why have you been _ignoring_ me?” Patrick accuses in return, only realising how pathetic that makes him sound after the words have escaped him. He wishes for a second that he could take them back, hide them and present Richie with a different view of himself.

But then Richie’s eyebrows draw upwards in incredulity and Patrick gets what he’s been after all this time: an explanation.

“Why have I been _ignoring_ you?” He repeats, outraged. “Because you pissed me off! You _upset_ me, Patrick, and you didn’t fucking care!” 

Patrick frowns. Is that really what this whole thing is about? What was so dreadful about Patrick showing up at his house without an invitation?

Suddenly Richie sighs and his body sags, held up only by the weight of Patrick pushing him against the wall. It seems like all the fight has drained from him and he’s left exhausted.

“We’re not together, okay?” Richie says, confusing Patrick even further. What is Tozier getting at here? “We’re just hooking up or whatever. That’s fine. But I’m not gonna do that with someone who beats me up, _or_ who makes me ditch my friends ‘cause they’re so desperate for attention. Alright? If– If you want to keep doing that, then I’m out. That’s final.”

Patrick inhales through his nose and exhales through his mouth, the way he always does when he is trying to calm down. It’s not that he’s shocked by what Richie is saying - it makes sense that he doesn’t want to be knocked around by the same guy that’s sucking his dick - but he’s shocked by his own reaction to the threat of Richie leaving. 

The thought of their arrangement ending, as fragile and new as it is, has him gripping Richie’s hair in a tighter fist. He ducks down without thinking and bites the side of Richie’s neck, sinking his teeth into the unmarked skin there. Richie shrieks and then stiffens as though he’s fighting off a shudder.

“Quit it!” He complains, pushing at Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick steps away easily.

“I won’t… show up at your house again.” He says suddenly. Rich clearly isn’t expecting it, and in all honesty, Patrick isn’t really expecting it himself. He won’t apologise, because he’s never sorry. He is completely unashamed of everything so he’s never needed to be, but the idea of Richie ending things between them has his blood boiling. He won’t let that happen, regardless of what he has to do to stop it.

Richie blinks, opens and shuts his mouth like he’s thinking hard about something. Then, in a voice that only wavers a little, says, “And hitting me?”

Shit, Patrick had been hoping he wouldn’t ask. Can he really promise not to hit Richie again? That has always seemed like something out of his control, something that he has no power over. He needs to hurt people just like he needs to eat or sleep or breathe. And Richie looks so cute when he’s crying…

No. He actually wants to put his cock inside this boy at some point. He can beat up some other fag loser until then.

“Alright, fine.” Patrick grumbles. “I won’t hit you again.”

A slow grin starts to spread over Richie’s face. He relaxes a little in Patrick’s hold and even starts to spread his legs, as though inviting Patrick closer. It’s an invitation that Patrick takes. Richie isn’t hard, but he moans softly when Patrick’s hand rubs over the crotch of his jeans.

“And my friends?” Richie asks breathlessly, eyes bright. He’s getting hard now, Patrick can feel it. It’s Richie’s ‘turn’ this time, and he guesses jerking the kid off in a public bathroom will suffice if he’s sweet and tender enough.

“Don’t fuckin’ push it, Tozier.” Patrick replies. Richie’s head falls back against the bathroom mirror with a heavy _clunking_ noise and Patrick grinds the heel of his palm into his erection, enjoying the way his body arches into Patrick’s own. Their chests brush and finally, finally Richie seeks out Patrick’s lips.

Patrick fucks his tongue into Richie’s mouth, curling one hand around the outline of his cock and stroking him tight and fast. He wraps the other hand around the curve of Richie’s waist. He wants Richie to come in his pants, to have to walk around school for the rest of the day and sit in his classes with drying come smeared over his dick. _Patrick_ wants to come on him, wants to make sure everybody knows who has claimed Richie.

Richie is gasping and writhing against the wall now, eyes screwed tightly shut, hips twitching helplessly into the pressure of Patrick’s hand. He’s about to come, Patrick thinks, Richie’s about to come and he can’t _wait–_

The bathroom door creaks open. Richie opens his eyes with a horrified, startled gasp as the reality of their situation descends upon them. There’s no time for them to jump away from each other before Eddie Kaspbrack is stepping inside and taking in the picture laid out before him.

He does not look impressed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long wait! I have no excuses :(
> 
> I’m really glad you all enjoyed Patrick’s POV though! I’ll definitely be doing that again :D

Richie has been in a lot of uncomfortable situations in the past. Most of them are his fault, granted, and maybe this one it too, but he can’t help feeling that he doesn’t deserve  _ this much  _ bad luck in one week.

There’s a heavy, awkward beat of silence as the door swings shut behind Eddie and then Patrick says, “Well, shit.”

“What the  _ fuck?”  _ Eddie screeches. Richie can tell that he’s teetering on the edge of hysterical and he really wants to avoid a scene, so he disentangles himself from Patrick’s body and hurries towards Eddie, flinching when Eddie looks him up and down in confusion.

“Are you– are you okay?” He asks, concerned, baffled, like he doesn’t know how he should be reacting. “Did he make you do something?  _ Richie?” _

“No!” It would be so much easier for him to say yes, Patrick made him, manipulated him, messed with Richie’s head. If he admits to wanting it, wanting  _ Patrick,  _ then he knows what he’s admitted to Eddie. He betrayed them. Not only did he fail to even come out to them, but his first relationship was with the guy who has been bullying them for years, and he kept it a secret.

Because he doesn’t know how to describe it– it isn’t just about sex anymore. Maybe it is for Patrick, and maybe it started that way for Richie as well, but he actually likes spending time with Patrick now. The thought of spending an evening together - or a morning stuffed inside a high school bathroom - fills his stomach with dread but it also excites him, and there must be something very wrong with him that he feels like that.

How could he ever hope to explain that to Eddie?

As it is, it turns out he doesn’t have to. Whether or not it’s a good thing, Patrick answers the question for him.

“Relax, Wheezy. Tozier fuckin’ loves it.” This, as one would expect, doesn’t calm Eddie down at all. If anything, it enrages him even more and when his gaze lands on Patrick with his shoulder leans against the wall and the outline of his hard dick obvious in his pants, Richie knows there’s going to be trouble.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie hisses. “Just shut the  _ fuck up,  _ Hockstetter. Stay away from my friends or I swear to god I’ll–”

“You’ll what?” Patrick pushes himself away from the wall and saunters towards them. He’s smiling, but Richie’s seen that smile, knows that smile, has been on the receiving end of that smile enough times to know that Patrick is anything but amused. He needs to get Eddie out of here, but he also needs to make sure that he doesn’t tell anyone, and he needs to calm Patrick down and he just doesn’t know if he has the energy to do any of that.

“Okay,” Richie holds his hands up in the air and steps between them. Patrick has hurt him before, but they did  _ just  _ come to a peaceful truce, so Richie is sort of counting on him not doing it again. “Why don’t we all just calm down? There’s no problem here, I promise I can explain everything.”

“Oh, my bad.” Patrick steps back and leans against the wall again, cocks his hip like the petty bitch he is. Richie shoots him a withering look because he is really not helping. 

“Richie, what the fuck?” Eddie leans closer to him to whisper it, but Patrick is right there and he can obviously hear everything that they say. “Seriously? What is going on? Is he blackmailing you or something? Richie, you should have told us. We would have  _ helped  _ you. We’d never have let him touch you!”

Eddie is in some serious denial and Richie can’t say that he blames him, but it is going to be hellishly awkward trying to snap him out of it. 

“Jesus, I already told you.” Patrick interrupts  _ again.  _ “He wants me to touch him. He fucking  _ loves  _ when I touch him.”

Eddie glares at Patrick for a fraction of a second before he turns to glare at Richie instead, and Richie hates when Eddie glares at him. He has a way of making people feel two feet tall and guilty. 

“Is that true?” He says it like he’s accusing Richie of some horrible crime. In a way, he is. “Richie, tell me that’s not true. Tell me he’s lying.”

Richie can’t, so he stays silent. The lack of a response seems to worry Eddie further and when he speaks next, his voice is frantic and high pitched, pleading more than asking.

_ “Richie!  _ Tell me!” Richie looks at his feet, ashamedly. He hadn’t wanted anyone to find out, but he especially hadn’t wanted anyone to find out like this. What can he say to excuse himself?  _ Sorry I’ve been sleeping with the guy that torments us in school, he just gives good head.  _ For some reason, Richie doesn't think that would go down overly well.

He’s lost for words, and when Richie Tozier is lost for words, he does what he does best. He talks.

“What can I say, Eds? One night with your mom’s vagina was all it took to turn me into a full on, flaming homo. I know, I know, it’s ironic, but you can’t tell her, alright? It’d kill her to know she slept with a faggot–”

_ “Shut the fuck up!”  _ Eddie cries, arms flapping by his sides, clearly agitated. “Richie, I do not give a single shit that you’re gay! None of us would. I’m pissed that you slept with a  _ fucking psychopath.”  _

Richie shuts his mouth with an audible clack of his teeth. He’d known, of course he had, somewhere in the back of his mind, that none of his friends would give a shit. They’re called the Losers for a reason and how could he ever believe they’d think any less of him?

But Eddie judging him… maybe it’s justified, because Patrick is an asshole and a bully and probably a psychopath as well, but it makes him angry. Richie can feel his cheeks heating up and his hands curl into fists. He’d never hit Eddie, ever, but it’s a relief to be able to dig his nails into his own palm and feel the pain.

“Eddie,” he says softly. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” Eddie laughs humorlessly, incredulously. “I can’t act like you’re not making a huge fucking mistake. I need to tell the others.”

“No, you  _ don’t.”  _ Richie says through gritted teeth. He loves Eddie like family but the boy can be so frustrating sometimes. “This is my secret to tell, okay? And I  _ will  _ tell. When I’m ready. Please just give me that, Eddie?”

Eddie shifts, clearly uncomfortable now.  _ Good,  _ Richie thinks.  _ Maybe he’ll realise how serious this is now. _

But of course Richie has no such luck, and after a moment of contemplative shuffling, Eddie shakes his head. “I’m  _ sorry,  _ Rich,” he says, sounding genuinely pained. “I can’t. You’re not safe. I have to do this because I love you.”

Richie’s face probably shows a variety of different emotions before he forces himself to remain calm and neutral. He didn’t want to have to do this but Eddie is acting like he has no choice, so Richie is going to show him what that feels like. He’s being mean and vindictive and doing something he swore to Eddie he would never do, but why should he keep that promise when it’s clear Eddie wouldn’t do the same for him?

“Okay,” Richie is proud that his voice only wavers once. “Then I’m sorry. I love you too, Eddie, but if you tell them about this then I’m going to tell them about your medication.”

Eddie’s face pales. His lips press together into a thin line and Richie has to pretend he doesn’t see the tears gathering in Eddie’s eyes so that he can keep his own cool.

“Eddie,” he whispers, heart aching at the pain he’s caused his best fucking friend. “I’m sorry. Please, I just want to be able to tell them myself. Please?”

Is Hockstetter worth this? Is Richie really burning a bridge with his oldest friend so that he can keep having meaningless hookups with his high school bully?

But then, he reminds himself, it isn’t just the hookups. If Eddie tells them, he’s forcing Richie out of the closet, and it’s going to be a long time before Richie is ready to do that. He meant what he said; he does plan on telling his friends. Just… not for a while.

“Fine,” Eddie snaps, voice brittle and hurt. “Have it your way, Richie, but don’t come crying to me when he fucks you over. Because you and I both know he will.”

With that, he turns and leaves. The door slams into the wall behind him and then swings shut slowly, creaking on its hinges. Richie feels like crying.

“Jesus,” Patrick snorts in amusement behind him. Richie shivers when he feels Patrick’s hands sliding over his shoulders towards his chest and he braces himself to have to reject Patrick’s advances yet again, but he’s surprised when Patrick just hugs him from behind and rests his chin on Richie’s shoulder. It’s actually quite nice.

“What’s the deal with his medication?” Shit, Richie hadn’t even thought about how he wouldn’t explain that to Patrick. He can’t, obviously, can’t just betray his best friend’s trust with the person said best friend seems to hate most in the world. Assuming that post isn’t dedicated to Richie by now.

“Oh, he’s a drug dealer.” Richie says confidently, wiping the back of his hand over his eyes surreptitiously. It can’t work, considering Patrick is literally hovering right over his shoulder, but he doesn’t mention it and Richie is thankful for small wonders.

“Oh yeah?” Patrick’s breathy laugh tickles Richie’s ear.

“Uh huh,” Richie nods again, facetious. “Heisenberg level drug dealer over there. He has clients all across Europe man, I’m telling you.”

Patrick spins him around and kisses him firmly on the mouth. It takes Richie by surprise so much that he doesn’t protest or pick an argument afterwards. Instead, he watches in confusion as Patrick turns to leave and yelps in indignation as he smacks Richie’s ass on the way out.

It’s been such a weird day, Richie can’t fucking wait to get home.

***

Since then, things get better with Patrick and worse with Eddie. Richie can’t understand it, can’t fathom why it’s so easy to talk to his worst enemy and so hard to talk to his best friend. He knows he crossed a line mentioning the issues Eddie has had with his mother and his fake medication, knows that Eddie told him that in confidence after breaking down on his shoulder, but Eddie had backed Richie into a corner. He’d threatened to  _ out  _ Richie, even if he hadn’t known that was what he was doing, and what, was Richie just supposed to take that lying down? 

God, Richie wishes things were different but he doesn’t know how. Part of him wishes he’d never gone into that bathroom with Patrick, but a larger part of him wishes Eddie had never found out and that’s got to be ten times worse. He’s such a bad friend.

As he’s thinking, he catches Eddie’s eye. They’re in the clubhouse, arranged in a circle with a mountain of junk food and a few six packs of beer in the middle. Mike is helping out at the farm and Bill is probably suffocating under a thousand first drafts. Ben and Bev are huddled together off to the side and Eddie and Stan, a few moments ago, had been involved in a heated debate about the merits of telepathy. Richie has his phone out in his hand and a string of messages with Patrick up on the screen.

He’s been talking to Patrick a lot in the past week. Ever since Eddie found out and their ‘relationship’ was no longer a secret, Patrick has been a lot more hands-on. Every spare second that they’ve had together, Patrick has been groping him or leaving bruises just below the neckline of his t-shirts, and for whatever reason, Richie just doesn’t feel the need to complain. He kind of likes Patrick being possessive, acting like he gives a shit about Richie even if it’s just to remind him who he belongs to. He likes the way Eddie’s eyes narrow whenever he shows up disheveled and smiling.

And he’s pleasantly drunk now, enough so that, when Patrick’s next message arrives he doesn’t see any reason to turn him down.

_ ‘Coming over later?’  _ Patrick asks. Richie hides a grin behind his hand and types out a quick affirmative, snickering when his fingers fumble with the keys and his message autocorrects to something completely random.

_ ‘You’re fucking wasted lmao’  _ Patrick tells him, which he already knows, and for some reason it sets him off giggling like an idiot. Beverly shakes her head but Eddie’s gaze flickers between Richie and his phone suspiciously.

“Jeez, what’s wrong with you today?” Stan rolls his eyes, clearly not thinking much of it.

“Yeah, Richie,” Eddie chimes in, which is slightly more worrying. He’s been toying with Richie ever since he found out, trying to get him to tell the others whenever they’re alone and putting pressure on him whenever they aren’t. Right now, Richie is too drunk and too tired to react.

“I mean,” Eddie continues. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were dating someone. I know better though. Obviously we’d be the first to know if that ever happened.”

Even Ben, obliviously in love with Beverly as he is, picks up on the tension underlying Eddie’s words. Richie can’t help but roll his eyes as he stumbles to his feet.

“Trust me, Eds,” he wobbles a little on his feet but manages to steady himself and walk over to the ladder without falling over and knocking himself out. “If I got a girlfriend, your mom would be the first to know.” He accompanies it with a wink that’s more like a blink and dumb grin. He’s not on top of his game tonight, even Richie can admit that.

“I’ll see you losers later,” he salutes them as he crawls his way out of the clubhouse, ignoring the mumbled goodbyes he gets in return. He has the good sense to at least wait until he’s a fair distance away before he calls Patrick and sits himself down on the side of the road.

“The fuck do you want?” Patrick asks as soon as he picks up. Richie can hear the smirk in his voice.

Cursing is their love language, Richie has decided. Not that they are  _ in love,  _ but Richie has at best grown fond of Patrick and in turn Patrick hasn’t punched him in over seven days, so he guesses they’re doing pretty well so far.

“A lift. Please?” He sounds pitiful, sitting there in the street with his bare arms and his scruffy trainers. He’s cold and messy and drunk and he wants Patrick to come and pick him up, and part of him thinks Patrick will be angry that he got drunk because it’ll mean that they can’t mess around but the other part knows that it wouldn’t stop him.

“Jesus,” Patrick sighs, long suffering. “Where are you?”

Richie tells him and sticks his free hand under his armpit to warm his fingers. “Thanks,” he says, muffled but grateful.

“Yeah, whatever.” Patrick relies. On the other end of the line, Richie can hear movement and the jingle of keys being jostled around, and he smiles. Patrick is already on his way. “Don’t be a pussy about it, Tozier. If you get kidnapped I’ll have to find someone else to suck my dick, and I just got used to you.”

“Uh huh,” Richie grins. He’s not being a pussy about it. He’s just… secretly very pleased.

“Whatever,” Patrick says again. “I’m hanging up now, flamer.”

He doesn’t wait for a response from Richie to hang up the phone, and Richie is left with the dial tone in his ear. He knows it won’t be a long time to wait because Patrick is a very reckless driver, but the ten minute period between hanging up and seeing Patrick’s shitty car skid around the bend in the road and head towards him feels like an eternity in the cold, dark winter.

Patrick pulls up too close to Richie to be safe, and peers out of the window at him. Richie feels dizzy when he stands up but he manages to get himself into the car without throwing up. Miracles can happen after all.

“You look like shit,” Patrick tells him bluntly.

“You’d know,” Richie retorts weakly. He lets his head fall back against the headrest and his eyes slip shut, already feeling like he’s about to go to sleep. He wonders if Patrick will push him into the floor without so much as a blanket, or if he’ll let him sleep in the bed. 

That’s the last thought he remembers. The hum of Patrick’s engine lulls him to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I’m on tumblr now if you feel like saying hi! @tiigixox


	7. Chapter 7

It’s pretty telling that Richie’s first thought the next day, when he wakes up in Patrick Hockstetter’s bed, is, ‘what did he do?’ His head is aching and his throat feels like sandpaper, but both those things can be accredited to Richie’s poor decision making. Nothing else seems to be hurting and, unless Patrick decided to risk everything for a little heavy petting whilst Richie was unconscious, he’s otherwise alright. 

The light filtering in through the windows seems blinding when Richie first opens his eyes, and he has to push his face into the pillow to get away from it. He lets out a low, pitiful groan and pushes himself up onto his elbows, looking around slowly so as not to disorientate himself any further. He’s been in Patrick’s bedroom a few times before, but never alone and whenever he’s been here in the past it’s been to mess around. Now, as he casts his eyes around the room, he can see that Patrick is nowhere to be found.

He desperately wants a glass of water and hopefully a couple of painkillers - if Patrick even registers pain as a real thing, Richie hasn’t seen any proof of it so far - but can he really just walk around Patrick’s house like he has any right to be here? What if he runs into Patrick’s parents, or a sibling even? Does Patrick  _ have  _ a family? These are probably the sorts of things Richie should know.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up, waiting until the black that creeps in on the edge of his vision has subsided. He has the strongest urge to rifle through Patrick’s bedside table - he must have something to hide in there, surely - but it’s the fear of Patrick walking in on him doing it that ultimately stops him, not the guilt of snooping. 

Patrick’s house is small, Richie knows that. He’s been sneaking through the hallways at night for long enough to know his way around and so when he finally manages to stand up straight and take those first few shaky steps, he heads directly for the kitchen. Unless Patrick is in the back garden sacrificing some small furry animal, that’s where he’ll be. Hopefully with coffee.

The door to Patrick’s parents’ room is closed and when Richie passes it, he can hear the faint sound of snoring. He shudders as he takes the stairs one with shuffling feet; with his parents right there in the house with them, surely Patrick wouldn’t do anything  _ bad _ to Richie? Right?

As he expected, Richie finds Patrick in the kitchen. He’s standing curled over the counter, dark hair falling like a curtain around his face. Richie enters slowly, cautiously, feeling thrown off balance. He can’t really remember anything that happened last night other than calling Patrick to come and pick him up, and the idea that Patrick just came to collect him, took him home and put him to bed… it has him feeling odd. He half expects Patrick to have done something bad whilst Richie was unconscious, and that, at least, would be expected.

“You’re awake,” Patrick says without even turning around. Richie swallows and steps closer– he feels like a child, caught sneaking around by their parents. Now he’s been spotted, he may as well show himself.

“Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse and scratchy. “You got any painkillers?”

“Yeah,” Patrick turns around suddenly and Richie is reminded all over again of how fucking tall he is. He towers over Richie with his long legs and skinny body, tilts his head as he grins.

“Can I… have one?” Richie continues, feeling more and more ridiculous by the second.

“No,” Patrick says simply. Richie should have seen that coming. He doesn’t have it in himself to argue about it right now.

“Do I need to ask?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Ask what?” Patrick seems genuinely confused, and Richie takes that as a good thing.

“I don’t remember last night.” Richie hints, and hopes Patrick will pick up on what he’s saying. Patrick is unlikely to be offended at the insinuation, but Richie stays firmly rooted on the other side of the kitchen table.

Understanding dawns on Patrick’s face– it’s scary to watch the way a smile stretches out slow and predatory across his face.

“You think I fucked you?” Richie’s cheeks heat with embarrassment at his fears being aired so carelessly. “Believe me, flamer, you’d have woken up.”

“Jesus, don’t say it like that.” Richie scowls and rounds the table to get to the counter. If Patrick won’t give him painkillers then Richie’s taking the coffee.

“Like what?”

“Like you  _ wanted  _ to.” Richie glares at Patrick over the rim of the mug and sips it carefully, not wanting to back down even when it scalds his tongue. Patrick shakes his head like he knows how much of a stubborn dumbass Richie is being but is content to just sit back and watch.

“Well of course I wanted to,” Patrick replies, as though Richie is the weird one for asking. “You looked real cute, drooling and everything. And I could have, if I’d wanted to.”

“But you didn’t,” Richie takes a step backwards despite himself, pulse racing. His grip of the mug tightens until his knuckles turn white and he’s afraid it might shatter in his hands. He doesn’t know whether he’s asking or simply trying to convince himself.

Patrick ducks his head to Richie’s neck and inhales. After a moment of stunned, half aroused confusion, he realises that Patrick must be smelling himself on Richie. 

“No,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against Richie’s jaw. “I didn’t.”

Richie doesn’t object when Patrick takes the mug from him and sets it down on the table, even though he knows what it means and what’s about to happen. He doesn’t want to stop; he wants Patrick to touch him and make him feel wanted. He’s just not so sure about doing it in the kitchen with Patrick’s parents both upstairs, likely to come down and see them at any minute.

Patrick, as it turns out, is not nearly as bothered.

“Patrick,” Richie breathes, shuddering when Patrick’s hand slips inside his boxers to press flat against the length of his cock. “Your parents– we should move.”

“Nuh uh,” Patrick grins against Richie’s skin. He grinds the heel of his palm over Richie’s cock and walks them backwards until Richie is pressed flush against the wall, held up only by the pressure of being caught between two solid things. 

“What if they…” Richie’s words trail off into moan as Patrick circles his thumb over the tip of Richie’s dick. His legs tremble and Patrick, the first indication that he gives a shit about the risk they’re taking, slaps a hand over Richie’s mouth. Either that or he just wants to feel Richie’s panicked, shallow breathing against his palm. It’s probably the latter, Richie decides.

“You wouldn’t let me touch you before,” Patrick hisses into his ear, distant, as though he’s really talking to himself. “And then in the bathroom you never got to come. So this? This is your turn, and I want you to come.  _ Now.” _

The force of Richie’s orgasm leaves him breathless and exhausted. His legs give out under him and Patrick has to catch him around the middle to stop him from face planting onto the floor. 

“Jesus, Tozier, sit down.” Patrick laughs. “Didn’t know I was that good.”

Richie slides into a chair and rests his forehead against the cool wood as Patrick washes his hands. They have maybe a minute of companionable silence where neither of them brings up what they just did before a low, creaking noise from upstairs disturbs it. Richie jerks upwards in his seat and looks for Patrick’s advice.

“You need to leave before they get down here,” he says, voice low and insistent. Richie’s heart sinks.

“What, I don’t even get breakfast?” He tries to sound sarcastic, but based on Patrick’s eye roll it comes off more pathetic.

“It would be such a fucking headache making them think I have a friend.” He explains, and, fair enough, that actually makes sense to Richie. He supposes going your whole life with even your parents thinking you’re a psychopath, it might then be hard to explain how you got yourself a boyfriend.

Or… not a boyfriend. Just a friend, who you sleep with. Occasionally.

“Right, fine!” Richie stands and the legs of his chair screech noisily against the floor. Patrick’s eyes narrow in irritation.

“Sorry,” Richie holds his hands up in surrender. “I’ll be going. See you soon though! See you in school, I mean. Bye!”

Jesus, Richie could not have handled that situation any worse. It was like someone stuck him in his worst nightmare and told him to act casual.

He manages to stay calm and walk away until he’s sure he’s out of the eyeline of Patrick’s house; then he runs. He barely knows where he is and if he gets lost, it’s not like he can always ask his dad to come and pick him up. Like Patrick said, it would be a headache to explain anyway.

He’s just debating with himself whether or not to call one of his friends for help - none of them have a car anyway, so maybe that would be a dumb move - when the decision is made for him. There’s a slow-building noise behind him, tyres on gravel gradually getting closer, and when Richie turns around he recognises Belch’s beloved car straight away. Henry Bowers is in the passenger seat and Vic Criss is leaning forward between the two, just watching.

Richie is so fucked.

Maybe, he thinks to himself, if he stays calm and continues walking as normal, they won’t feel like picking on him. Maybe if he just heads for his house and acts like he doesn’t recognise the mortal danger he is in, they’ll lose interest and just drive away.

Of course, the world is not that merciful. Henry sticks his head out of the window and, as they pass Richie on the sidewalk, he spits. A wad of saliva lands inches from Richie’s feet and he stops abruptly. Going back to Patrick’s house is not an option - they’d probably try to pick Patrick up on their way to beat the shit out of Richie - but it’s not like he can run forward. His best option is turn on his heel and leg it back the way he came, because at least that will give him a head start as Belch tries to turn his beloved cat around without scratching it.

But his head fucking hurts because Patrick, asshole that he is, didn’t let him take a painkiller, and Richie thinks he might pass out if he tries to run anywhere. He should have just bitten the bullet and called his father while he had the chance. Maybe Patrick will at least avenge him.

“Yo, faggot!” Bowers calls out of his window suddenly, making Richie jump. “The fuck are you doing round here?”

“Your mom,” Richie yells over his shoulder, not stopping or looking back to assess the consequences. “What does it look like, asshole?”

He figures the revving of the engine and the angry cursing is enough of a response.  _ Fuck it,  _ he thinks, and runs.

He’s not entirely sure where he’s going and his head feels like it’s about to explode, but he keeps going in desperate hopes of outrunning the car. Richie doesn’t know exactly where he is at the moment so he could be running in circles, but miraculously, after seeing nothing but the road ahead of him, he turns a corner quickly and is met with the entrance to a forest. If he cuts through it and heads for the middle, he’s almost one hundred perfect sure he’ll reach the barrens. He laughs, breathless and joyful, with the knowledge that he might not die today after all.

Then he hears tyres squeaking on tarmac, hears the  _ thunk _ of three car doors slamming shut at the same time, and he gulps. Maybe he’s not so safe after all.

He almost loses his glasses with how quickly he’s racing through the trees and how careless he’s being, not even looking where he’s going. Branches lash at the bare skin of his arms and leave painful scratches behind. The crashing noise behind him is getting louder, getting closer. Richie can’t outrun them forever. He has to find somewhere to hide.

Without thinking it through, he ducks behind the nearest bush he can find. There’s a fallen tree trunk cutting through diagonally and he rests his back against it, slouching down to stay out of sight.

He needs to call for help, but what can he do? Call his parents or his friends and admit that he has no idea where he is? Refuse to tell them how he got there? No, there’s only one person who’d be able to help him now and he could very well be out there terrorising Richie right now. That’s a risk he has to take, though.

His fingers fumble with the keys as he brings up Patrick’s contact and clicks call. There’s a brief, horrible moment where he realises his phone isn’t on silent and the dial tone is shrill in the silence of the forest. He hurries to stifle the sound and silence his phone and then waits a tense few seconds to see if he’s been discovered. When there are no thunderous footsteps heading in his direction, he presses the phone to his ear and listens with baited breath.

He waits, and waits, and waits some more. Patrick doesn’t pick up.

“Shit,” Richie hisses, cutting the call off before he can be sent to voicemail. He flounders for a few seconds before deciding to make one last ditch attempt to contact someone. If he is about to die here today, he wants to have ties up all his loose ends first. He doesn’t want to die with his best friend hating his guts.

Eddie doesn’t pick up the phone either. That’s fair enough - they’re still arguing, and Richie hasn’t made any attempts to repair the rift between them - but it still hurts. This time when he gets sent to voicemail, he doesn’t hang up.

“Hey, Eddie,” he speaks low and quiet, not wanting to draw too much attention. “Sorry about springing this on you. I get that we’re not speaking right now, but– Bowers is about to beat the shit out of me and it seemed like a good time to tell you I’m really fuckin’ sorry. If you don’t wanna hear it then, y’know, fair enough. I guess I wouldn’t want to hear me out either. But I love you, okay dude? Patrick is an asshole and I won’t deny it, but… I don’t know. I think I just like him.” Richie only realises when his voice cracks that there are tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. He wipes them away with the back of his hand and sniffles in a way that will no doubt have Eddie squirming with discomfort.

“Anyway,” he swallows past the lump in his throat and exhales steadily. “Okay. Well, see you.”

He hangs up and presses his fist to his forehead. If he survives this, Eddie will think he’s a pussy anyway. At least they’ll have something to laugh about - that could bring them closer together, Richie hopes.

He stands suddenly, full of pent up anger and frustration. He hasn’t heard anything for a while and he can’t just stay cowering in a bush all day. What would Patrick think of Richie if he was there too? He’d probably laugh. What he told Eddie wasn’t a lie: Patrick is an asshole, but for some reason Richie seems to like that.

If Patrick has anything to do with this, Richie doesn’t know what he’ll do. You can’t break up with someone you aren’t actually dating, but he and Patrick have been hooking up for so long that it sort of feels like they’re a couple anyway. Richie doesn’t want to exaggerate, but with Patrick, he feels like–

The thought is gone in an instant, replaced instead by white noise and the occasional scream. He rounds the corner and walks straight into Henry Bowers.

“Shit,” Richie says, and he’s never meant anything more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world is changing rapidly and everything is a little scary at the moment so fanfiction and escapism really are our only coping mechanisms :’)
> 
> Hope you’re all staying safe and staying home if you can <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! This whole quarantine thing has been... pretty interesting. I hope you enjoy this chapter - the last one is on its way! <3

Patrick has no idea how the asthmatic kid knows his address. Maybe he should be more annoyed about that, but when he opens the door to find Richie’s five foot something best friend on his doorstep, he’s not exactly sure what’s going on. He’s half expecting to be roped into a fight - maybe the kid brought his friends along and they’ll have a six on one fight - but when Kasprack just stands there, staring at him, it becomes clear that that’s not going to happen.

“What?” Patrick asks after a moment's awkward silence, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest. “Can I… help you?”

The kid blanches, like he hadn’t really expected Patrick to talk to him. It’s funny, the way his eyes flash with fear and his throat bobs up and down nervously as he swallows. Then he steels his gaze and tilts his chin up defiantly and, even though he barely comes up to Patrick’s shoulders, Patrick can see why Richie likes hanging out with him. He seems fiery, protective. It kind of pisses Patrick off and he wouldn’t mind slapping the kid around a little, but at least Patrick would respect him while he did it.

“Is Richie here?” Eddie says eventually, a tremor in his voice. Patrick pushes himself away from the doorframe and pulls himself up to his full height, but Eddie doesn’t flinch. Patrick frowns. Whatever he’s scared of, Patrick isn’t it.

“No,” Patrick answers simply. He technically didn’t promise that he wouldn’t beat Richie’s friends up, but they’ve been getting along so well recently that he doesn’t want to spoil things. Richie is so close to letting Patrick fuck him, he can tell, and Patrick doesn’t want to risk that.

“Is  _ Henry  _ here?” Eddie persists. Patrick frowns now - this isn’t just about protecting his friend from the big bad bully anymore. Something has happened, and Patrick wants to know what.

_ “No,”  _ Patrick grits his teeth. “Why are you here?”

Eddie frowns. He looks torn, with his hands clenched into fists and his lips pressed together into a thin line. Finally he sighs and his shoulders droop.

“Richie called me,” the words spill out of him, unstoppable, like a plug that’s just been pulled. “He said– he said Henry found him. If Bowers got him then he’s really fucked, and I called around and no one knows where he is and I thought maybe he was with  _ you–” _

He stops abruptly, looking round as though he expects someone to jump out of the shadows to spill Richie’s secret. Patrick laughs despite himself. Henry probably has found Richie - everyone knows he hates him enough - and if it’s happened already, there really isn’t a lot Patrick can do about it. Still, he’s got nothing better to do today and maybe Richie will be easier if Patrick helps him out.

At the very least, it’ll get Kaspbrak off his doorstep.

“Uh,” Patrick rolls his eyes and steps out of the house. He’s still barefoot and dressed in only a short sleeved t-shirt and some sweatpants, and he can see Eddie eyeing him warily. “Fine. Have you tried calling him?”

“Of course,” Eddie scoffs. Patrick glares at him; he agreed to help, what the fuck more does this kid want? Eddie notices his expression and looks away hurriedly, embarrassed to be scared.

“I called him,” he tries again. “And it just goes straight to voicemail. When was the last time you saw him?”

“This morning,” Patrick tells him the truth. He already knows, so it’s not going to be any more damaging to Richie’s precious secret. Besides, he kind of likes how uncomfortable Eddie gets whenever Patrick mentions something to do with Richie or the relationship they have. “He left my house. He stayed the night.”

Eddie’s shoulders tense and then drool, resigned to disappointment. “Of course he did,” he murmurs. “And you haven’t heard from him since?”

Rather than replying, Patrick fishes his phone out of his pocket and swipes to Richie’s contact. The dial tone rings a few times without response before an automated voice tells him that Richie isn’t available. Shit.

“Not picking up,” he grunts, irritated at the genuine seed of worry that slips into his voice. Eddie fidgets next to him, movements jumpy and nervous like he wants to ask something but he’s holding himself back. Patrick doesn’t encourage him. 

“Well, where could he be? If he’d only just left your place, he couldn’t have gone far.”

“You wanna split up and look for clues?” Patrick’s not exactly  _ worried,  _ because it isn’t like he particularly cares about Richie or what happens to him, but if he’s done something to antagonise Henry then he could be in a lot of serious trouble right about now. Patrick’s not  _ bothered _ , but he doesn’t want anyone else’s bruises on Richie’s body. 

“Would you take this seriously?” Eddie whirls around to yell at him, and Patrick is actually impressed. He’d never have thought Kasprack had the balls. 

“Easy, flamer.” Patrick snickers.

“No! This is all your fucking fault, anyway! Why couldn’t you just stay away from him? Why’d you have to drag him into your nightmare life? And if you  _ had  _ to fuck with him like this, why didn’t you give him a  _ fucking lift home?” _

Patrick reacts before he has time to think it through, lunging forward in response to fist his hand in Eddie’s shirt and tug him forward. Eddie yelps and his hands fly up to scrabble at Patrick’s fist.

“Watch your tone, Wheezy. Tozier’s not my fucking boyfriend and  _ you  _ don’t get to talk to me like that.” Eddie is so small that, when Patrick shakes him, his teeth practically rattle. Patrick is about to go further, maybe slap him around a little, but a noise from off to the side stops him. They both freeze. When Patrick lets go of him, Eddie stumbles and almost trips over.

The bush rustles, footsteps grow closer, and then Richie bursts into the street. There’s a red mark circling his eye that will undoubtedly be a dark bruise by tomorrow, and his face is littered with other scratches and cuts. He has a split lip, a steady stream of blood down his chin, and Patrick feels anger ripple through him for the first time. He wants to pull Richie towards him by his fucking hair and kiss him, hard and fithy and painful, until their lips and teeth are both smeared with blood. He wants to do it in front of Eddie and Henry and anyone else that tries to take what belongs to Patrick.

“Oh fuck,” Eddie breathes, pushing away from Patrick to hurry over to his friend. Patrick stays still for a moment longer, unsure how to approach this. Richie is limping though, and Eddie obviously isn’t going to be much help moving him anywhere, so he rolls his eyes and shoulders past Kaspbrak to hook Richie’s arm over his shoulders. 

“Richie! Are you okay– Richie, we need to take you to a hospital!” Eddie shoots Patrick a hateful glare but other than that he doesn’t put up any fight. He just hovers anxiously at Richie’s side and pretends he doesn’t see the way Richie grips desperately at Patrick’s shoulder. Something warm and possessive unfurls in Patrick’s chest.

_ Fuck it,  _ he thinks, and sweeps Richie’s legs out from under him. Richie groans, but it’s Eddie that puts up the most fuss; if he doesn’t like their arrangement in the first place, he’s sure as hell not going to like Patrick carrying Richie bridal style away from him.

“Hey!” He cries, short legs leaving him unable to catch up. “Hey, Hockstetter! Where the fuck are you taking him? Bring him back– we need to get him to a hospital.”

“Jesus, and I thought  _ you  _ were the mouthy one. Does he come with an off switch?” Patrick whispers, pressing his nose against Richie’s hair and inhaling. Richie’s body vibrates with laughter but when Patrick looks, his eyes are shining with tears. Patrick can’t explain what it is that makes him hug Richie closer to his chest, but he doesn’t like the way it makes him feel.

“We’re going to my place,” Patrick tells Eddie, voice clear with finality. He’s not leaving any room for argument. “You can come if you want, but shut the fuck up.”

When quiet, the journey seems a lot shorter. Richie bleeds on his t-shirt and Eddie almost trips on his heels, but they make it back to Patrick’s house in just over ten minutes. Before, he’d been cautious of his parents catching him with Richie. Now, that thought seems ridiculous and unnecessary.

“Get the door,” Patrick tells Eddie. Eddie glowers, but he only hesitates for a second. Patrick kicks the door behind them and heads for the stairs.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Eddie stills at the bottom of the stairs. He’s tiny like that, hesitating, uncertain. Patrick laughs.

“I’m taking him to bed, Kaspbrak, do you want to watch?”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Eddie wrinkles his nose. The bright surfaces of his eyes are glassy with forgotten, unshed tears. Richie makes an unhappy noise from where his head is buried in Patrick’s chest, as though to chastise him. Normally, Patrick wouldn’t give a shit. Now, though…

“For fuck’s sake,” Patrick says on an exhale. Richie’s lips curl into a knowing smile. “I’m just gonna lay him down while I get some fucking aspirin. Jesus, would you calm down. Stop acting like I’m gonna rape both of you any second. Let your guard down, Wheezy.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry for assuming you might beat us up. No idea where I got  _ that  _ idea from.” He’s so smug that Patrick wants to push him down the stairs. He’s acting like Patrick shouldn’t be allowed around Richie, as if Richie hasn’t been sucking Patrick off every other fucking day for the past couple weeks.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Patrick snaps. He’s surprised himself - little things like this don’t usually make him angry, but now he’s ready to flip out. “I’m trying to do something  _ nice  _ for once. Isn’t that what you want?”

Eddie, who rarely backs down when faced with an argument, throws his arms up in the air. Patrick is preparing for whatever bullshit the kid throws at him, but they’re interrupted by the buzz of a phone. It takes a moment longer for Patrick to realise it’s his.

“Is That him?” Eddie says, overeager. “Is that Henry? Don’t answer it.”

“Shut up,” Patrick says, distracted. He’s distantly aware of Eddie hurrying up the stairs after him but he can’t focus on that right now; he lays Richie out on his bed and holds a finger to his lips as he answers the call. It is Henry, Eddie was right, and Patrick doesn’t know what to expect when he holds the phone to his ear.

“Hockstetter?” Henry’s voice is muffled and tinny through the speaker. “Where the fuck are you? I thought we were gonna go out together.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Patrick lies. He gives Richie a once over where he’s curled up on top of the covers. “Something came up.”

“Your fuckin’ loss, dude. We messed the Tozier kid up, you should have been there.”

Eddie is kneeling beside the bed now, his fingers intertwined with Richie’s. Jealousy rises in Patrick’s throat like he’s going to vomit; the only person that should be able to touch Richie is Patrick and here he is, watching someone else brush Richie’s hair away from his face, away from the bruises that  _ Henry  _ put there. This can never happen again. Richie is his until Patrick decides otherwise, and if he has to spill their little secret to be sure of it then Richie will just have to fucking deal with it.

“Patrick? You still there, man?” Henry says. Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose - he can feel a headache coming on.

“Yeah,” he says. “You know what? Let’s meet now. Come round my house. Just you– there’s something I wanna show you.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Just do it.” Patrick hangs up before Henry can argue. He’ll be here, because in the past Patrick’s surprises have always been fucked up in some way or other, and Henry can never turn down the opportunity to hurt people. 

Eddie turns his face away hurriedly when Patrick approaches, like he’s trying to convince him that he wasn’t eavesdropping.

“What are you doing?” He asks, voice tight, shoulders tensed. “Were you in on this the whole time or something? Was this just a ploy to– what? Get both of us instead of just Richie?”

“Have I been sleeping with Richie for months as some elaborate set up to beat the shit out of both of you?” Patrick scoffs, although that does sound like the sort of diabolical plan he would come up with. He likes that Eddie suspects it of him. “Relax, Wheezy. If I wanted to beat you up, I could do that any time I liked.”

“So…” Richie groans and they both pause. He’s only half conscious and every now and then he’ll toss and turn in Patrick’s bed, sweating, still bleeding into the sheet. “Why did you ask Henry to come here? What are you doing?”

“I’m sorting out a problem.” Patrick takes one lasting look at Richie before he has to turn away. He doesn’t like the way it makes him feel. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

If Eddie has a problem with staying in Patrick’s house, he doesn’t say it. Patrick leaves before he gets a chance to, and closes his bedroom door behind himself. Henry must have been in the area when he called because Patrick gets a text as he’s heading out.

_ ‘I’m here,’  _ Henry says.  _ ‘Where the fuck are you??’ _

Patrick doesn’t bother replying. He’s already opened the door.

“There you are.” Henry, previously sitting hunched over on Patrick’s doorstep, stands up. “What did you–”

Patrick punches him in the face. The impact makes a sickening  _ crunching  _ noise and Henry screams in pain, stumbling back with his hands cupping his nose. It’s probably broken - or at least fractured - and Patrick considers that a job well done. Blood streams between Henry’s fingers and when he lets his arms fall to his sides, it becomes clear that his face is already swelling up. He curls his hand into a fist and Patrick braces himself to fight back.

“What the  _ fuck?”  _ Henry demands. Patrick doesn’t get a chance to respond before Henry is charging at him, driving him backwards so that his head knocks against the doorframe. Patrick doesn’t register the pain.

“Tozier’s mine,” he grabs Henry by the throat. He may be lanky, but Patrick is much taller than Henry and it’s easy to lift him almost completely off the ground. “So back off.”

Henry can’t even breathe, let alone speak, so Patrick eases up on the choking. 

“I understand, it’s fun to mess with him, whatever. But from now on you leave him alone. Everyone does. He’s mine, alright?”

Henry lands in a broken heap when Patrick finally lets him go. He won’t agree at first, that’s inevitable, but Patrick can be pretty persuasive when he wants to be. After a few broken fingers and a few black eyes, maybe Henry will be more open to suggestion. Patrick doesn’t like it when other people touch his things, and the only person who should be putting marks on Richie is Patrick himself. Richie will probably appreciate it, and if it means that their secret hook ups are revealed to the world - or at least the school - then so be it. He should have expected this: from what Patrick’s heard already, Richie Tozier cannot keep secrets.

“Are you crazy?” When it comes again, Henry’s voice is raspy and quiet. He scrambles back on his hands and feet until he’s far enough away from Patrick to stand up. “You’re gonna fuck up our group for some little bitch? Some  _ faggot?” _

Patrick sighs. He knew Henry wouldn’t understand.

“He has a nice ass.” He shrugs. Henry wrinkles his nose in disgust but before he can say anything else, Patrick shuts the door in his face. He doesn’t have any particular close attachment to Henry other than mutual understanding and a shared love of violence. They won’t address the issue - they’ll just ignore it and go back to their regular lives as soon as Henry has had time to sulk.

Eddie is waiting for him when Patrick turns around.

“I thought I told you to stay in my room,” Patrick grunts.

“Yeah, well, I’m not your bitch. You can’t boss me around.”

“Whatever.”

“No– wait.” Eddie cringes, grits his teeth like he’s having to force the next sentence out. Patrick waits impatiently, eager to get upstairs to see whether Richie is awake yet. “Thank you.”

“What?”

“I wanted to say thank you. For helping him, and– and for that whole thing, with Henry. So, yeah, thanks.”

Patrick doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about Eddie or his opinion, he doesn’t even care about  _ Richie.  _ Still… the words bring an inexplicable smile to his face and he turns his face away quickly so that Eddie doesn’t see it and get any ideas.

“Yeah, well,” Patrick shrugs again. “Don’t get used to it.”

It’s just meant to placate Eddie, meant to subdue him so that he doesn’t think Patrick is a ‘nice person’.

But he has to wonder, all the same, how long this can last. 


	9. Chapter 9

Richie doesn’t go to the hospital in the end. It would be too complicated to explain how he got hurt and maintain that he didn’t want to press charges in the face of his parents’ concern. Against Eddie’s better judgement, Richie stays in Patrick’s bed until he can bear to stay awake for longer than five minutes. 

It feels weird, being in this bed without Patrick, without messing around in it first. It’s nice, because Richie is so tired and his whole body aches and the pillow smells like Patrick, but it’s unsettling at the same time. At the back of his mind, there always seems to be a looming threat. He can still feel Henry’s fists against his skin, can still taste blood in his mouth. His memories are just a hazy blur at the moment but he’s trusting that Eddie will fill in the blanks; he was in the woods, on the phone, then he was on the floor and his whole body was hurting. Then, the next thing Richie remembers, he was being held in Patrick’s arms and carried back towards his house.

It’s a strange sense of deja vu, feeling groggy as he staggers out of Patrick’s bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. He can hear low, murmuring voices and he follows the sound until the floorboards creak underneath him and a sudden silence falls. Richie freezes.

_ Shit,  _ he thinks.  _ So much for eavesdropping.  _

“You gonna stand out there all day, dipshit?” Patrick’s voice, at this point, doesn’t come as a surprise. Richie takes a deep breath and rounds the corner. He’s expecting to see Patrick and Eddie, probably sitting at opposite sides of the table and pretending to ignore the other. He isn’t expecting to see Beverly standing with them, but by the look of it, she has been expecting him for a while.

Richie’s stomach drops. What the fuck happened while he was asleep? His eyes dart between all three of them before finally settling on Patrick accusingly; maybe it’s not fair of him to expect Patrick to keep their secret but Richie feels betrayed nonetheless, like he didn’t do enough to prevent this. Patrick rolls his eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says. “ _ He  _ invited her. Without my permission, by the way.” Patrick directs that last bit at Eddie, who glares at him in response. Beverly ignores both of them, and before Richie can reply she’s rushing towards him. 

“Jesus, Rich,” her fingers pause just centimetres away from his face, tracing the bruises. Her mouth twists with bitten-back anger. “Henry really got you, huh?”

“What are you doing here?” He appreciates her concern, but his face is burning hot with shame. If she’s here then that means she  _ knows,  _ or at least knows enough to put two and two together. Beverly is smart - far smarter than Richie - and he doubts she won’t realise what they’re all doing here, what Richie is doing sleeping off his injuries in Patrick’s bed. He just hopes none of the others know.

“Eddie called me,” she says, watching him limp over to the table and lower himself carefully into a chair. He knocks his knee against Patrick’s under the table and hides a smile when Patrick steps on his toes. It’s as close to holding hands as they’ll ever get.

“Did he now?” Eddie ignores the unsubtle barb.

“She’s dealt with shit like this more than anyone else!” Eddie says tactlessly, as though to defend himself. Then, “Sorry, Bev.”

“No worries,” she says. “But he’s right, Richie. You need to get some ice on your face and make-up to cover the rest if you don’t want your parents to freak. I can help with that. Richie, are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? Your ribs could be broken.”

“They’d want to get the police involved.” Richie picks at the sleeve of his t-shirt uncomfortably. 

“So get the police involved!”

Patrick has been sitting silently this whole time, just observing them, but now he chuckles under his breath. Eddie whirls on him with a furious scowl.

“You’ve been awful quiet,” he says stonily. “Do you have something to add?”

“You know his dad’s the sheriff, right?” Patrick looks between them all with the same exasperated expression, but he presses his thigh firmly against Richie’s as though softening the blow. “You go to the police, nothing will happen. He’ll just say you’re lying and send you away. Besides, I already took care of Henry. He won’t bother you again. No one will.”

Jesus, what did Patrick do? What else did Richie miss out on while he was unconscious? He’d be lying if he said Patrick’s promise brought him much comfort.

“Well that sounds shifty as fuck,” Richie says bluntly. “What happened?”

“I said that you don’t need to worry about it.”

“I’m not worrying, I’m  _ curious.”  _ Sometimes, arguing with Patrick is like arguing with the logic of a small child: enough to give you a headache. 

“Curiosity killed the cat.” Patrick levels him with a sarcastic smile.

“Oh really?” Eddie interrupts them, slapping his hands face down on the table. “I thought that was you.”

“You two are a fucking nightmare.” Beverly snaps. She turns on Richie. “You’re going to have to tell the others sometime. You know that, right? You can’t just keep them in the dark.”

“Tell them what?” Richie hopes playing dumb will get him off the hook. Based on the deadpan look Bev shoots him, it’s not going to work. “Listen, I’ll tell them in my own time. Like, a few years from now maybe.”

_ “Richie!” _

“Beverly! Why do I have to tell them at all? He’s not my boyfriend!”

He looks to Patrick as though for backup. Patrick shrugs, unhelpful. Beverly looks between them dubiously, but decides not to say anything about it. 

“You have to tell them because they’re your friends, and you respect them as people, and they deserve an explanation. Does that all sound accurate?”

Richie slumps in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest, the perfect picture of a sulky teenager. “I guess.” He says, not meeting her eye. She softens.

“Listen, Richie,” her fingers brush the back of his hand and Richie relents, squeezing her hand in his own. “I get why you’re… reluctant. Not gonna lie, it was definitely a shock to hear about you and– and  _ him.  _ But you know they’ll always be your friends, right? We all will, no matter what. We wouldn’t ever tell anybody, or judge you.”

Richie thinks back to Eddie’s disgusted expression in the school bathroom when he first found out, and he has to disagree. He doesn’t say any of this though, because Beverly has got a point. They do deserve to know why he’s been acting weird and distant lately. He’s just dreading the conversation they’ll inevitably have to have about it.

“Besides,” Beverly continues, the last piece of the argument that persuades him. “You’ll have me and Eddie by your side the whole time. And we won’t let Henry ever get near you again.”

Patrick sighs sharply as though annoyed that someone else is taking credit for his work. Richie elbows him, very unsubtle.

“I’ll tell them,” Richie has to concede in the end. Beverly wouldn’t have let up about it until he agreed. “But it’s gonna be so fucking awkward and that’s your fault. I just want you to know that.”

“I think I can live with that.” Beverly rolls her eyes fondly. “How about you, Hockstetter? Do you have anything to add?”

Patrick has mostly stayed at the sidelines as Beverly and Richie talked, but now he leans forward with his elbows on the table and grins wolfishly. “Tozier’s not my boyfriend,” he says simply, echoing what Richie had said just a few minutes earlier. “I don’t give a fuck who he tells.”

“Then it’s settled.” Richie doesn’t want to be the one to argue with Beverly when she’s made her mind up. Evidently no one else does either, because Eddie stands and fidgets, looking anxiously between Beverly and the front door.

“Is that it, then?” He asks. “Can we leave?”

“I think I’m gonna–” Richie swallows back his nerves. He doesn’t need to explain himself to his friends. They already know about pretty much everything, and he can stay if he wants. “I think I’m gonna stay.”

Eddie lets out a long sigh. “Thought so,” he mutters, loud enough for everyone in the room to catch it. Beverly lays a comforting hand on his shoulder and steers him out of the room and into the hall.

“Be careful, Richie,” she says before she leaves. It’s cold outside and the sudden gust of cool air chills Richie’s bare skin. There are droplets of blood on the doorstep– he won’t ask. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

The door clicks shut behind her. Richie stands in silence for a moment, feeling inexplicably heavy and relieved at the same time. 

“Jesus,” Patrick groans, standing for the first time in a while. He stretches his arms and grins as his joints crack. “I thought they’d never leave.”

“Are you alright?” Richie doesn’t know what compels him to ask, but something about the way Eddie and Beverly both looked at Patrick the whole time they were there set him on edge. Patrick saved him from Henry. He’s still an asshole, but he hasn’t hurt Richie in a while and he intends to keep that streak going. 

Patrick tilts his head, considering, and Richie isn’t naive enough to think he’s contemplating the question. He stays still as Patrick assesses him, just lets himself relax until Patrick finally moves. When he speaks, he does so in a soft voice that Richie has never heard him use before.

“Come upstairs,” he says.

***

Richie tells himself that he’s not nervous. It would be silly to be nervous - he’s been completely naked in front of Patrick before, been sprawled out vulnerable and wanting like this before - and just because this is different shouldn’t make it scary. At least, it shouldn’t be any scarier than Patrick is on a daily basis. 

Patrick is with him now, not fully clothed but still protected by the cover of his underwear, knees balanced on either side of Richie’s hips. They’re both hard, both ready to go thanks to the half hour of making out they’ve already done. Richie thinks it might be Patrick’s ‘turn’, but as soon as the thought crosses his mind he dismisses it. They’re past that by now, he hopes. Before, if they’d gone all the way on Patrick’s turn, Richie would have been far more scared. Patrick likes it rough, likes it hard and fast and painful, and Richie doesn’t think he could lose his virginity like that - not even to honour the deal they made.

Now, though, it feels like something has changed between them. Richie isn’t terrified like he would have been before Henry attacked him. He’s trembling with anticipation, not fear. His body feels like a live wire, electric to the touch, tense and ready to blow.

“Patrick,” Richie whispers, eyes locked on Patrick’s, wide and unblinking. “Don’t make it hurt?” It’s a reminder more than a plea, more than a warning. As dangerous as the thought might be, he doesn’t believe Patrick will hurt him on purpose. Not anymore, not even to get himself off. If Patrick decided he wanted to hurt Richie, of course, he could. Richie’s too weak to fight him off properly and Patrick is much stronger than him on a good day. It wouldn’t take much to overpower Richie in his current state.

But, however unlikely it seems, Richie doesn’t think Patrick will try.

“It’s going to hurt,” Patrick says. It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.

“Be gentle,” Richie says instead. Maybe that’s a more reasonable request. He can’t expect it not to hurt on his first time.

Patrick slides his hand over the outside of Richie’s thigh and curves it inwards at the dip of his waist; he drags his nails down Richie’s chest and over a nipple. Richie’s body jerks against the mattress and Patrick lays his other hand flat over his chest to hold him down. Richie groans, sensitive and so aroused his cock is beginning to ache. 

“Easy,” Patrick murmurs, twisting his torso to reach for the lube in his bedside drawer. Richie watches the way the muscles ripple under his skin, the way the knobs of his spine stand out. He wants to reach out and trace the tip of his finger down Patrick’s back but he feels too tired, too lethargic. He can’t even raise his arm.

“Please,” Richie breathes, squeezing his eyes shut. The bottle opens and closes with a sharp click. There’s a moments silence where time feels suspended - then Patrick’s hand slips over Richie’s thigh and spreads his legs wide. With the other hand, he traces a wet finger over Richie’s hole. They’ve never even done anything like this before and Richie, for all his eagerness, has never touched himself here either. It feels strange, sensitive in a way that’s almost too intimate. He has to force himself to relax and lets the tension drain out of his muscles.

Patrick’s first finger slips inside without warning. It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t feel particularly special, but Richie groans anyway. Sweat beads on his forehead already and Patrick is breathing heavily, his fingers digging in tight to Richie’s thigh. Richie shakes his leg a little and Patrick blinks and relaxes, as though waking up from a trance.

“Ready for another?” Patrick asks, thrusting that single finger in and out loosely. Richie just nods, overeager. Patrick says, “You know there’s no rush?”

“What?” Richie’s tongue feels too heavy in his mouth.

“You don’t have to rush through this bit to get to the next.” Despite this, he adds another finger on his next thrust in. Richie throws his head back at the sudden stretch and clenches around Patrick’s fingers without meaning to.

“S’all–  _ fuck.  _ Leading up to one thing, isn’t it?” He pants desperately.

“One day,” Patrick curls his fingers and pleasure explodes like flashing bulbs behind Richie’s eyes. “I’m gonna stretch you out just like this, play with you for fucking hours. Get you to come on my fingers till you can’t anymore.”

Richie’s cock jumps against his belly. Precome wets the head and leaves a damp spot against his stomach. Patrick takes his fingers out.

“I’m gonna fuck you now,” he says, his voice no more than a low growl. Richie groans, feeling hopelessly empty without some part of Patrick inside him, and his toes curl against the bed.

“Then do it,” he says.

The first push in hurts more than Richie was expecting. He should probably have told Patrick to give him a third finger but he’s so desperate to have Patrick’s cock inside him that he doesn’t want to waste any time. The stretch leaves him speechless and gasping for breath; his nails dig into Patrick’s shoulders and he leaves deep scratches without even meaning to. It’s so  _ much,  _ almost too much, but Richie is so hard he might just come untouched.

“You’re tight,” Patrick grunts, thrusting without giving Richie any time to get used to the new sensation. He keeps his movements slow and steady though, which Richie has to appreciate.

“You’re so fuckin’ romantic,” Richie says, voice strained.

“Shut up,”

“No, I’m serious.” It’s difficult to talk with his brain all scrambled, but Richie has never been good at shutting his mouth. “You say the nicest things.”

It happens slowly. The corner of Patrick’s mouth twitches up, he smiles and shakes his head, fucking into Richie, his chest vibrating with laughter. Richie’s body thrums with electric pleasure. 

“You’re such an idiot,” Patrick whispers, and then kisses him. It’s difficult to focus on kissing when each thrust has Richie’s mouth hanging open in a silent moan, pushing him closer and closer to the brink of orgasm, but he does what he can. Patrick trails wet, open mouthed kisses down his neck and over his collarbone, where he digs his teeth in. Richie’s cock jumps. 

“Gonna come,” Richie warns him. Patrick doesn’t stop and he’s deep, so deep that Richie can’t breathe with how good it feels. “Patrick,  _ fuck.” _

He comes all over himself and it smears over Patrick’s chest when he keeps fucking into Richie. He feels sore and oversensitive, his orgasm having sapped him of all energy, but Patrick chases his own pleasure like Richie knew he would. When Patrick comes as well, it’s deep inside him; Richie feels it, wet and gross but so fucking hot.

Patrick rolls off him and they lay there, staring up at the ceiling to catch their breath.

“Wow,” Richie says.

“Don’t start.” Patrick groans. “I already know everything you’re about to say. Just don’t.”

“Asshole,” Richie laughs, shuffling closer to Patrick and pulling the covers over their bodies. They’ve never done anything like this before, anything even remotely close to cuddling, but Patrick doesn’t tell him to stop so Richie doesn’t. His body is still aching - new pain on top of old - but when Patrick throws an arm around him lazily he barely feels the hurt.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Patrick tells him. “You can’t stay.”

“I know,” Richie says. He just wants to lie still for a few more minutes, just wants to savour this moment. He never thought he’d get something like this. It’s nice. 

Patrick shouldn’t make him feel safe, and Richie still feels a little uneasy around him sometimes, but for the most part, he’d say things were going pretty well. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone’s doing well in quarantine! I got so bored that I’ve started making edits on youtube and I made a richie/Patrick one cause I’m trash :’) check it out [here](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCodl9K0bywz1RTMsmf3ufQw) if you’re interested!
> 
> Other than that, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Together We Burn (alone we fall apart)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641226) by [thexqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thexqueen/pseuds/thexqueen)




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